The Powerful and the Dark
by Alymer-A
Summary: Fox has carved out a quiet life for herself in Storybrooke, her secrets safe. Then, suddenly, the town is filled with refugees from the Land of Untold Stories. Tales have begun unfolding and the man behind it all has a few secrets of his own - some of them similar to Fox's. Fox finds herself forced to face her own untold story, and the question becomes: How will it end?
1. Chapter 1

**Well, the plan was to get this up on 5/15 (EST), but I'm a lazy ass, so 'twas not to be.**

 **So here's the thing, right?**

 **I've had issues with OUAT in the past; how the writers have handled characters and how they always seem to go with the easier, less complicated option/ending instead of going where the plot seems to be leading (which is often in a direction that makes much more sense to me). Saltiness abounds, don't even get me started. But I have to say, I never felt compelled to do the thing and write a fic until the Jekyll/Hyde and Aladdin arcs.**

 **I had a** _ **lot**_ **of issues with the Jekyll/Hyde and Aladdin arcs (totally not just because Sam Witwer is bae, although let's be real, he is – and do not even get me started on Deniz, Oded, and Karen…).**

 **And then, of course, the rest of season 6 happened and I've been having a very difficult time accepting any of it. So I've taken more than a few liberties here, and I'll post reminders of this fact at the start of more relevant chapters. Just know now that this is a complete overhaul – particularly in the second arc – and, no, my OC is not a self-insert.**

 **I'll be using the two arc structure of seasons 2-5, but the middle will include a much clearer setup.**

 **Unnecessary Disclaimer: I don't own Once Upon a Time or any of its characters or plot and I do not post this story for profit.**

* * *

" _Come on, we could use some extra help."_

She straightened her black jacket. The hem always rode up when she walked.

" _Why would you open the only jewelry shop in Storybrooke if you didn't wanna talk to people?"_

Her purse bounced against her side, and her silver ring got caught when she straightened the strap on her shoulder.

" _I mean, I guess you didn't_ open _the shop, but you kept it running, right?"_

She had smiled at that. Henry was a sweet kid; not surprising for the owner of the heart of the truest believer. And she was his favorite shop owner – an honor, she was sure – so it wasn't surprising that he'd come to ask for her help.

" _And who knows? Maybe you'll like socializing. Y'know, getting to know people?"_

Before she had known what she was doing, she had conceded. She was becoming convinced that it was impossible to say _no_ to Henry. So, the next morning she had donned a flowy pink tank and her signature black boots and made her way out into the chilled autumn air.

As Rose Foxley pushed open the front door of Granny's, she caught the end of Mayor Mills saying something about togetherness and got swept up into the applause. It wasn't until it had died down that Henry realized she was there, his face lighting up as he made his way over. She vaguely heard someone enter the diner behind her, but she had no chance to turn around.

"Fox," Henry greeted, smiling up at her. "You made it!" His brunette mother made her way over as well.

"Well, I guess I have a hard time saying no to the kid who supports my business."

"Oh, Henry, who's this?" the mayor asked, glancing down at her son before turning her gaze back up to Fox. Henry's expression suffered a moment of confusion. His mother had told him before that she knew exactly who had been brought here with the first curse. She brought who she wanted.

"I'm Rose Foxley-Fox." She held out a hand and the mayor hesitantly shook it. "I'm a fairy," she explained lowly out of the corner of her mouth, "I broke off from the flock. Got swept up in the second curse." Henry's brow smoothed out in understanding and the mayor nodded, her face warming.

"She owns a jewelry shop near the bed and breakfast," the teenager explained before regarding Fox again. "And she lets me do my homework at one of the tables outside."

"Oh, that's nice," Mayor Mills noted pleasantly. She let go of Fox's hand. The fairy would never admit it, but she felt a small wave of relief. Perhaps she had never personally met the mayor, but she certainly knew her reputation. However, she had seen her eyes in town meetings and looking at them now, there seemed to be something different. Fox drew a short breath in through her teeth.

"Anyway, your son convinced me to come and help with our new…citizens?" Henry looked up at his mom as she raised her eyebrows a moment and shrugged one shoulder. Apparently, nobody had thought that far in advance. Fox raised her eyebrows in kind and nodded once before continuing. "Is there anything I can do? You seem to have things pretty much," she glanced around the woman before her, "all figured out." The mayor looked back for a moment before turning to the fairy once again.

"Well, we still need to take names. Seems it's about time for another census." Fox had never noticed before just how expressive the mayor could be. The Queen had seemed to be some stoic, shadowy figure, sending flames at anyone who dared challenge her. This woman's face was far more eloquent than the other fairies had given it credit for. She sent a smile down to her son. "We can't have Henry doing _all_ the work." The corner of Fox's mouth turned up.

"I'd be more than happy to help, Madam Mayor." The mayor chuckled and brushed the formality off.

"Oh, please, call me Regina," she insisted. Fox gave a real smile at that. "Excuse me." Regina headed into the fray. The fairy turned to Henry, eager to get started. The sooner she was engaged in some sort of work, the sooner she could forget that she was in an inherently uncomfortable situation. Fox had never been much of a one for large groups of people.

"So, where are we with that list?" Fox and Henry moved back to the bar and David and Snow directed refugees over to them on their way to lunch. Fox took her jacket off and hung it on the back of her seat, then hung her purse over it.

"Here." Henry slid a mostly blank sheet of notebook paper to her, a ballpoint pen sitting atop it. "A couple of the refugees aren't here today, we couldn't fit everyone," Fox nodded. "I've already got them on my list, so now we just need to get down everyone's name who's here now," he explained.

"You got it, chief." Henry smiled at her, and she couldn't help but smile back. Shaking her nerves was going to be impossible, but something about this kid made it easier. But again, she supposed, he did have the heart of the truest believer.

Fox looked down at the paper in front of her. There was a column for names and a separate column for number of children. She asked Henry about it.

"Well, Grandma figured with all the untold stories around here, it might be good to keep the kids out of it. And Storybrooke does have a daycare." Fox raised her eyebrows.

"Huh. That's a good idea." She settled into her seat and greeted the first person to approach her, having been directed by Snow herself. Henry moved to sit down himself, before he noticed a scruffy-looking man enter through the front door as Hook, Emma, and Belle exited. The newcomer walked slowly into the diner. He was blonde, and dressed in grey with a long, embroidered yellow vest and a scarf draped around his neck.

"Who are you?" Henry asked the strangler abruptly. He stopped and turned his head to face the brunette.

"Beg your pardon?" His voice was soft, as though he didn't use it much.

"What's your name? If I can find your story then maybe we can figure out how to pick up where you left off." The blonde turned slowly to face Henry, straightening his thin grey coat.

"You won't find me in there, m'boy. I'm not important enough to have my own tale." Henry chuckled.

"Don't say that," he encouraged, turning back to the book. "Lemme just see if I can find you," he muttered. What he didn't see was the newcomer depositing an envelope on the bar beside him and turning to exit through the front door, as quickly and silently as he had come only moments earlier. By the time Henry turned to look, he was gone.

The front of the envelope had no writing on it. Only an old-fashioned crimson wax stamp with an ornate letter _M_ carved into it. Henry picked it up and turned it over. On the back, in calligraphy, was inscribed _Snow White and Prince Charming._ The teenager frowned down at it, then turned to Fox, who was chatting with an animated little brown man in poufy dress, complete with a large yellow top hat. The man paused to write his name on her list and Henry gently tapped her on the shoulder.

"I'll be right back." She nodded and the corner of her mouth lifted in what fell just short of a happy expression. He recognized that look as the one she gave customers when she was desperate to close her shop for the night, but shrugged it off and waved his grandparents over.

"Henry," his grandfather greeted before he could usher them outside, "how's that list going?" Snow's eyes moved to Fox and her brow lifted in confusion.

"Oh, hello." The man with the top hat – Mitul was his name – moved on to pick up some lunch and Fox turned to give the princess before her full attention.

"Hi," she greeted cheerfully, still in customer mode. "Sorry, we haven't met." Fox held out her hand. "I'm Fox, I run Three Gem Jewelers by the bed and breakfast." Snow shook her hand warmly, then David in turn.

"That's right," the prince said with recognition in his eyes. He regarded his wife. "You remember? I got your last anniversary present there." Snow's eyes lit up.

"Oh yeah!" She turned to Fox. "It's so nice to meet you!" Well, the princess was definitely as sweet as her reputation. Fox smiled back; her second genuine smile of the day.

"It's really nice to meet you too," she expressed, truthfully. "And, honestly, I'm not sure how you two have time for anniversaries with all the sword clanging that happens in this town." Snow laughed and looked up at her husband as he responded, a smile on his face.

"Well, we make time." He settled an arm around his wife without even looking, like it was a natural thing. Henry supposed it was and smiled at the thought. David turned his eyes to his grandson again. "So, have you written down everyone who's not here?"

"Yep," Henry replied, "I think so."

"Are you sure?" Snow asked. "You've got the Doolittles?" Henry nodded. "The Pixleys?" Henry briefly glanced down at the list, then returned his eyes to his grandma and nodded again. She gasped. "Oh, and, of course, we can't forget about Dr. Jekyll," she added.

"And Mr. Hyde," David added grimly. Fox, who had been helping someone new, froze and looked up at the Charmings. As soon as the brightly dressed woman at her side had moved on, she spoke up.

"I'm sorry, did you just say Dr. _Jekyll?"_

"Well, yes," said Snow, frowning. Henry rifled through the story book on the counter. It was clear from just one look at the illustrations that this was not his original book. No fairytale princesses to be found here.

"Why, you know him?" asked David, also frowning. Finding the page he was looking for, Henry slid his book closer to Fox. She inclined her head and gazed down at the illustration of a tall, imposing man standing over a much smaller, wide-eyed fellow. They wore the same clothes, but that was as far as their similarities went. For one thing, the man on his feet was clearly scruffier, and sporting a set of mutton chops to boot. The man on the floor had lighter hair, but a more tanned complexion. But the thing that stood out the most was how terrified the man on the floor seemed. And Fox had an idea of just what was inspiring that terror. She didn't look up as she answered.

"We crossed paths a long time ago." There were several moments of silence between them. Then, as if remembering where she was, Fox took a sharp breath in and lifted her head, at the crowd gathering to her left. "So. Who's next?" The Charmings glanced at one another, but let it go. They moved away when Henry waved them to the exit. Before he followed them, Henry turned to Fox again.

"Are you okay?" She chuckled lightly.

"I'm fine, Henry. It's just been a while since I was around this many people," she glanced around the room and, for a moment, she saw a great hall of stone and a well-dressed turnout. Quickly, though, Granny's came back into view with its diverse crowd of people who needed help. "It takes some getting used to." Henry nodded.

"Okay, well…" he shrugged, "I'll be right back." She nodded and gestured for the next person to come over.

Once Henry came back, they made a rather extensive list. People from dozens of realms had come to Storybrooke, and whenever someone with a familiar name came to the bar, the teenager would stop to find them in one of his books. He had brought several with him. And they discovered far more connections between the stories than even Henry would have expected.

Finally they made it through everyone. It had taken about an hour, simply because so many of the newcomers had questions. Where could they work? Where could they rent? Did something called Billings Root grow in Storybrooke? Once it had died down, Henry looked over at Fox.

"What did you mean?" he asked suddenly. "What you said about Dr. Jekyll," he clarified. "That you'd 'crossed paths.'" Fox hesitated and considered lying. But then she really looked at Henry. He might have been a kid, but he was still the Author. Whatever she hid from him now, he might just write about on his own. And if Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde were both really in Storybrooke, all the townspeople would find out sooner rather than later. Then there was always the chance that her story was already in one of the – evidently numerous – story book volumes. Besides, what was to stop him from telling one of his moms that she was hiding something? Both women were forces to be reckoned with. But still…

Fox glanced around cautiously. Her past was…complicated, to put it mildly. The magic in it was murky and convoluted. She had spent too much time trying to get away from anything to do with the good doctor and his doppelgänger to be pulled back into the fold by a new townsperson with large ears now. Of course, she had known that getting involved with the Land of Untold Stories would be a mistake. Still, she had allowed herself to hope that maybe – just maybe – Storybrooke could be her safe haven. Nobody seemed to be listening, but that did not mean she shouldn't be wary. In the end, she kept her words few and simple.

"Just be careful," she warned lowly, still glancing around the room. "He may be charming, but Jekyll might not be what he seems." Henry was confused.

"But–" he began, brow furrowed.

"Henry." Regina appeared behind him, as if on cue. Fox jumped, not having seen her approach, but she covered it by turning back to the bar. "Listen, I have to go deal with something, but I'll be back soon."

"Okay, mom." She kissed his cheek, gave Fox a smile, and left the diner. When Henry turned back to the bar, he was frowning slightly, but Fox was looking down at her watch.

"Oh, y'know what, I've actually gotta get going too. I closed the shop but someone's coming in for a ring resizing and I didn't wanna cancel on her." She handed Henry her list. "Sorry, kiddo."

"It's okay." He looked around, but didn't see his grandparents or Hook. "Where is everyone?" he mused.

"Maybe you should give Violet a call," Fox suggested as she donned her jacket. Henry gave her a look, but he couldn't fight the blush rising to his cheeks. The fairy chuckled and swung her purse onto her shoulder. "I'll see you on Tuesday after school for cocoa and literature?" If there was one thing Fox had done plenty of, it was reading. Having been swept up in the second curse, she had missed what could have been twenty-eight years of becoming accustomed to this world. As soon as the townspeople had regained their memories of how the second curse had been cast, Fox had set about learning everything she could about Storybrooke. It seemed she – and everyone else – would be there for a long while.

"You got it." She gave Henry one last smile, patted his shoulder, and bustled out the front door.

Normally she preferred the walk, but if Jekyll and Hyde were in town, it was best she lay low. Fox knew she couldn't hide forever, but she could try. A few steps down the sidewalk, she waved her hand and disappeared in a cloud of sparkling pink smoke. Before she knew it she was behind the doors of her apartment, away from a made-up appointment and concealed from her own untold story.


	2. Chapter 2

**Well, that took longer than I was expecting. I'm sorry! I have a few chapters written in advance and a solid plan for the rest of the story, so if nothing else, I shouldn't have to take another month-long break. Unless, of course, my muse decides to check out on me. Either way, rest assured, though I did have a difficult time getting from A to A ½ I never forgot about this story (I actually thought about it** _ **way**_ **too much).**

* * *

"I was doing as I was told, sir."

"Yes, but if you can't be creative with your initiative, then what good are you as an orderly, Poole? You know the rules: no-one in or out, no matter the cost," he drawled in response. The normally threatening orderly shrunk back, wide-eyed. Mr. Hyde brushed him off. "Now, get out." Hyde moved to the window and clasped his hands behind his back, one curled into a tight fist. The man behind him remained silent before turning and exiting the parlor, and wisely so. Poole had left a gate unattended and the _patients_ had seized the opportunity to escape.

Hyde knew that many of them had no need of an asylum but playing the warden had been…fun. With all of Dr. Jekyll's professional memories swimming around in his mind, Hyde knew enough to play doctor. But without the gentle disposition of his mind's captive, his own experience had included far more neglect of his _patients._ He did value the information they had given him, however. His lip curled upwards at the flashes of memory in his mind – shouting, slamming doors, tearful confessions of stories untold. Locked away in his lab, there were stacks of meticulously kept journals; information he could use against those who had given it to him, but not only that.

Hyde had begun piecing together all he might need in order to build a portal. A way to travel through realms.

None of this would have been necessary had Jekyll not kept him locked away for so very long. In the months after their arrival in the Land of Untold Stories, the doctor's doppelgänger had no choice but to whisper from inside the coward's brain, his rage festering. All he could do was quietly remind him of Mary. Her face, her smile, her fascination with all of the doctor's gadgets. How unfair it was that she had perished while her killer escaped.

 _Killer._ Dr. Jekyll had been many things in London. He had gone to some questionable places in search of a key ingredient, a method he could use to perfect the serum that had caused all of this. Jekyll had passed contraband to his patients – cigars, ale, writing materials – in exchange for more revealing journal entries. But he had always been cautious. Great care seemed to be in his very blood. A _killer_ was something new.

And, much as it enraged Hyde, he knew it was because of him; the darkness staining Jekyll's soul.

It had been a hard job to formulate the plan, being only a fragmented part of Jekyll's consciousness. Since the doctor's first dose of the incomplete serum, however, Hyde had felt his own presence within the doctor. And so he had begun whispering.

 _Let go,_ he would murmur. _Take a break. Go on, let me take control. Let me steer the dirigible through this fog._ It took nearly a month, but eventually Jekyll felt it. All the fatigue, all the pain. Hyde's pain. There was enough serum left for at least three more doses, and the doctor gladly swallowed one. He set the darkness free.

The rest of the plan was more challenging, and required time. Hyde was careful to keep those thoughts to himself as he made the trek through the city. There was an estate on the hill at the very edge of the settlement with a dusty – yet useful – lab. Hyde shuddered to think what it may have been used for before its abandonment. But when Jekyll awoke the next morning, he would find five more doses of serum.

It went more quickly than Hyde had anticipated, the good doctor using his anguish over the death of Hyde's love as fuel. The serum became his oxygen, and the darkness his escape. And escape he did, over and over for longer periods of time. But like any drug, Jekyll found he required more of the foul liquid to achieve separation from himself as the weeks dragged on, side effects be damned. What did it matter that he could hardly stand on his own? That his bouts of awareness were growing shorter and far more difficult to maintain? All he desired was relief. He craved respite with the same fervor with which he had once craved recognition.

In the end, Hyde hardly had to do much at all. With the tolerance Jekyll had built to the clear, blue liquid, all it took was one particularly large swallow of Hyde's updated, stronger serum.

Even hours later, there was no exhaustion. Hyde had found a peculiarly rugged refugee squatting in his manor and enlisted his help in setting up the rooms. That night, under full darkness, Dr. Jekyll left his flat for the final time.

At first, Jekyll tried to flee – to return to his humble flat and leave his monster, his creation, behind. When once he nearly succeeded, Poole had suggested a weapon. A baton which crackled and sparked. His explanation was that his old mentor, Victor, had given him the idea. Hyde shrugged it off and resolved to threaten his orderly more often, if simply to keep him in line.

Jekyll gave up trying to escape. He gave up attempting to use the lab. He gave up roaming the halls. The doctor simply gave up. Jekyll became the groundsman to escape the _patients_ inside.

Now that they had escaped, Hyde would need a new plan. Then again, Jekyll always had been a coward. Perhaps Poole would be enough now. It was imperative that Hyde remain in control, even if it meant he remain locked inside his asylum for…forever.

The Land of Untold Stories had been meant as a refuge. A place people could go in order to remain safe. There was no chance of their stories playing out. And Hyde, knowing nothing of magic, had leapt at the chance both for himself and his weaker half.

Knowing all that he had learned, he would have made a very different decision given the chance. Magic was always literal and it always came with a price. A locator spell could lead you to remains. Predicting the future could lead to a nasty turn of fate. A land of stories untold was a land where stories couldn't be told. The Land of Untold Stories was a land without time.

At first, Hyde had assumed that his lack of inherent magic would allow him to age as normal. But no matter how he altered the serum, how he spaced Jekyll's doses, he remained as sprightly as ever. The perfect price for Jekyll, who had so badly wanted a normal life. A wretched condition of Hyde's satisfaction.

Now he saw that Jekyll had thrown one more cruel twist into his own melancholy existence. Hyde was stronger, more cunning, and far more powerful than the good doctor. But above all else, the doctor had imagined his darkness as everything he wanted to be rid of. Jekyll carried his memories, but Hyde carried the pain. His darkness was shame, dejection, desperation, and above all else, rage. Hyde bore all the scars of the doctor's mistakes so that Jekyll did not have to. So long as Hyde was in control, he could feel it. And every time he pushed it down, he added another link to his own armor.

As usual, Poole pulled him out of his reverie. Hyde turned to face him as he reentered the room.

"Sir!" the orderly called out. He sounded out of breath. The door swung closed behind him. Poole was limping. More than that, he seemed to be dragging something along with him. "Someone is trying to get inside!"

"What?" Hyde replied, his brow furrowed, eyes narrowed in confusion. He was the well-known warden of a dark asylum, who would want–

Suddenly the double doors of his parlor burst open.

* * *

Hyde shot upright at the sound of a loud bang, the shackles on his wrists reminding him that he was a prisoner once more, this time of metal rather than flesh. The cell itself was not so bothersome to him, it actually reminded him of his manor in the Land of Untold Stories. If slightly smaller. But these chains…

Still, it was only polite to acknowledge his guest. And she was quite familiar.

"I see you found my friend. Was she helpful?"

Hyde was unsurprised that his question was met with an explosive bout of bravado. So he turned and he pulled himself up to face this Savior who was far braver than all the others he had encountered. He had to hand it to her, she was impressive. The former warden saw the look in her wide eyes; the one that only came from decades of hardening. This Savior had clearly spent her life in captivity – or on the streets – always being told that she was nothing, that she _meant_ nothing. Even in this small cell, facing a man who could easily snap her neck if she strayed too close, she was putting on a show. Proving herself. _I am the Savior,_ Hyde thought wryly, _hear me roar._

And so Hyde did his best to show her that it was unnecessary. _That's funny, that's what the Saviors always say._ She wasn't special, she was simply another line of defense. The trick was not to lie. This was a game, and the only way to win was to stay ahead. _Wherever there's a Savior, there's a villain who brings them down._ Perhaps she could defeat the next villain, but there would always be another. _I expect you'll want to help them as Saviors do, but you have to ask yourself: is saving them exactly what causes your story to end?_ She might succeed in helping the next victim, but could that be her downfall?

The story of the Savior was predictable – he had seen it all before. First came the tremors, then the desperation. And hard as Emma may try to mask it with her steely gaze, she was desperate. She stepped here, he shifted there. They sparred with words, he stared her down, and it was only when she strode out of the cell that Hyde finally admitted to himself that he was exhausted.

He had played this game in the Land of Untold Stories. The countless times he had convinced Jekyll to take the serum. The nights he spent roaming the streets, acquiring his _patients._ The game was as familiar to him as this damn cell, and he was tired of it. Of all the untold stories he had brought with him to this strange new land, his own was the most overdue to play out, and this steel box was only increasing his restlessness.

If Hyde were being honest with himself, he felt some trepidation at the thought of facing his weaker half once again. This land was no London and it was certainly not the Land of Untold Stories. There were no narrow misses for death. Nowhere to go where any wounds suffered may be halted in their lethal course. It was as if he had taken leave from reality, and suddenly returned. But this land was very real. Facing Jekyll would mean confronting the very real possibility that he would not survive the encounter, especially now that the good doctor had managed to ensnare the sympathies of so many _heroes._

Still, he had been waiting years for a chance like this. A chance to face the coward who had lived in the shadows of his own waking mind for so long and to destroy him, once and for all. And for a moment he had thought – he had truly believed – that this land would be that chance. This _Storybrooke._ This could have been a haven for him, an opportunity for his story to play out. Jekyll had begun the battle for control the moment he drank his first dose of his serum. Hyde had nearly won in his dark asylum, and this Storybrooke might have been the place where he could win. And yet…

Hyde cast a glance around his cell. The only light was streaming in from the windows by his head, dim and red. This was the Dark One's doing. It had to be. Rumplestiltskin had to know that the heroes would be waiting for someone to cage, and that rat of a doctor would have told them exactly how to take him down for long enough to lock him away. The Dark One had clearly been counting on that, and after Hyde had failed him, letting all those _patients_ escape with all their grievances against him, he must have been waiting for the chance to punish him. But Hyde had a grievance as well.

Rumplestiltskin was meant to set him free.

In addition to those with stories untold, the warden would take the Dark One's problem customers. The ones who tried to break their contracts with him. Unsatisfied users of the magic they had borrowed from him, or else those who had suffered as a casualty of his dark deeds who had gained just enough power of their own to be considered a threat. In return, once the Queen had cast the Dark Curse, Hyde would be given a new life in this Land Without Magic and Jekyll would be trapped in the back of his mind forever.

Except that Hyde had failed. The _patients_ had escaped his asylum, and the Dark One had sealed the Land of Untold Stories. Mr. Hyde could never escape. Not even with a portal of his own making.

Hyde had resigned himself to this fate, carved out a corner of the land and sat quietly, until the strangers from Storybrooke had arrived. Nobody had dared trespass on his estate before them. He knew it must be the Dark One. And for Hyde, being only partly correct had been enough. He himself was the only being in the Land of Untold Stories who was unable to escape, but perhaps if a portal were to open up for someone else, he could slip through as well.

Failing that, he had allowed his impatience to get the better of him. It was a rare day when he would admit that having Dr. Jekyll in the back of his mind had been beneficial. Without the good doctor, Hyde was brash. Audacious. He had arrived in Storybrooke with half of a plan and enough arrogance to fuel it. And in a satirical twist nearly as caustic his imprisonment in Jekyll's mind, this cell had given him the time and the quiet he had needed in order to unravel what he needed to do. Defeating the Dark One – controlling his leash – was the only way to begin. Rumplestiltskin was easily the greatest threat. Once Hyde could establish himself as Storybrooke's greatest menace…well, then the fun could begin.

Now, if only he could escape.

* * *

 **So, a little different from what I typically do, but I think it turned out okay.**


	3. Chapter 3

**So, I normally would have broken this up and saved the second half-ish of this chapter for the next one, but that ended up being a really awkward break so I figured it would flow best if I just lumped everything together. I took some liberties with some of the dialogue and with the timeline, I hope that doesn't throw anyone off. Just to be clear: this all takes place within a much shorter time frame than it seems to in S6E4.**

* * *

It was too early when she heard it.

Fox had hardly realized where she was and how she got there – in the back room of her shop, she had slept there. It was a rare weekend that the Three Gem's was closed, however the swarthy fairy was reasonably certain that the townspeople would be too busy helping the refugees from the Land of Untold Stories to shop for anniversaries and birthdays. And the lack of notes slid underneath the door told her that she was right. Belatedly, after leaving Granny's on Friday afternoon, Fox had realized that her apartment was in the phone book under her name. So was her business, but she thought that the _closed_ sign would be enough for anyone to assume nobody was inside. And so she locked herself away in her back room at dawn's early light on Saturday and remained there through Sunday as well. There was no protection spell up at the shop, and Fox had thought about casting one. There was one in place at her apartment. Then, however, she realized that discovering one at her shop would only cause whoever was attempting to get in to become that much more invested in succeeding.

Had anyone been around to ask, she would have told them that she was simply falling behind in her work and was using this opportunity to catch up. She would have been lying.

If Fox were telling the truth, she would have gone home to shower and change instead of magicking herself into fresh sweaters. She would have worked quickly so she could have a proper meal at Granny's, not double- or triple-counted all of her stock and eaten a quarter of a sandwich at a time out of her mini-fridge. Replacing her normal methodical demeanor was a tension wound as tightly as an old extension cord, and it was all to do with one person. More specifically, two _parts_ of a person: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

While Fox's past may have been murky and convoluted, she remembered the two of them as clear as day. She remembered Dr. Jekyll, with his quiet and nervous manner, his wide, frightened eyes. And she remembered Mr. Hyde, with his sideburns and his self-assuredness. She remembered how the latter man rarely raised his voice – rarely needed to. The moment he opened his mouth, entered the room, even caught someone's eye, silence fell.

Fox normally enjoyed silence – it allowed her to think and to work. But the silence that filled her shop over the refugees' first weekend in Storybrooke was different. This silence was light and indefinite. It could have been broken, given hours or seconds and every time she heard herself breathe she expected to turn and see someone behind her, waiting. But nobody came, and on the last night of her long weekend she was finally able to tumble into sleep. So when she awoke just hours later, on Monday morning, to the sound of her shop's door flying open, she did not even think to contain the yelp that escaped her until she was twisting and falling out of the chairs she had been perched on. It seemed to still be dark outside – far too early for anyone to be there.

For the next few moments the brunette fairy held her breath, but whoever was in her shop came no closer to the back room door. Briefly, she thought of putting up a protection spell and disguising the door as the rest of the wall in which it stood. But then she thought of how forcefully the main door had been opened. Whoever was out there clearly knew something about magic, and if they had already seen the back room door, they would surely notice when it faded from view. Besides – and Fox cursed herself at this thought – in order to do a protection spell so involved, she would need her wand. Since she had arrived in Storybrooke, she had not had occasion to use it. It was in her main shop, underneath a case, and impervious to summoning spells. An ingenious idea at the time when she granted it with that immunity, but now…

Fox moved closer to the door. She could hear indistinct voices from the far wall, but she could not decipher whose they were, never mind what they were saying.

"…probably with Rumplestiltskin," Fox heard. "That's where every magical artifact in this town that doesn't belong to me is." That had to have been Regina. But the mayor was _good_ , Henry had faith in her. And Henry was the Author, if he believed in someone-

 _No._ Flashes of memory ran through Fox's mind. Clear blue serum, shadows shifting across shifting features. If Jekyll had finished his serum, and he and Hyde were indeed separated – as she had seen in Henry's book – of _course_ Regina would take advantage. This was the mayor's darker half; the Evil Queen.

"But this artifact is not magical, it is quite ordinary." Deep as it was, the voice was subdued. More than that, it was as if the words were spoken by someone who knew he needn't speak up.

Fox's heart fell into her stomach. A sheen of sweat spread its cold way across her forehead and she stumbled back a silent step. _Mr. Hyde._ The swarthy fairy wrapped a shaking arm around her own waist and continued to listen.

"And if it was brought here by your Majesty's curse," he continued – Fox could almost _see_ him bow his head respectfully – "then it stands to reason it would be somewhere on display." Footsteps. Heavy but measured. He drew closer to the back room's unlocked door, hesitated a moment, then moved on. He was looking through the display cases.

 _And I know what he's looking for._ A guilty knot twisted itself around Fox's heart, surrounded by nerves underneath her forearm. She squeezed herself tighter and continued to listen, closing her eyes. The fairy felt out with her senses – her magic.

On the other side of the door, the Queen swayed in place, still by the front door and gazing around the small shop. "It's not bad, for a Dark Curse."

Hyde tsked. "Admiring your own handiwork?"

"Well, I didn't have control over _everything,_ of course." There was a pause as Hyde continued to search. His eyes left no corner of any case unseen. "Just what is it you're looking for, anyway?"

"I told you," the imposing man reminded her lightly, "it's an old cameo necklace."

"Yes, but _why?_ And what makes you think a simple little fairy would have something so…significant?" Hyde's brow furrowed.

"I was under the impression that every fairy in Storybrooke was a member of the convent?" The way he said _Storybrooke_ made it clear that he refused to embrace the irony of the town's name. Behind his back, the Queen rolled her eyes, but her voice gave nothing away.

"All but one," she held up a finger. "And to her credit, she's the only one who managed to escape the Blue Fairy's clutches." The Queen's nose wrinkled in distaste. "That insipid gnat is like a cult leader," her voice lilted mockingly, "in a pretty dress."

Hyde's spine froze, but only for a moment. He turned away from the last waist-level glass case.

"I see," he muttered, just loud enough that his dark companion could hear him, but not so loud that she could decipher his tone. The Queen thought nothing of it. It did not go unnoticed to her that he had failed to answer her question, but before she could repeat it, his eyes lit up. "Ah." He strode over to the corner of the shop, to the left of the front door. There was a standing case with sparse inventory, and featured directly in the center was a red cameo necklace. "Here it is," he remarked, mostly speaking to himself. Without missing a beat, he pulled down a sleeve and struck the surface of the glass with the top of his wrist, just below the display neck. Hyde broke through layer upon layer of dust and reinforced glass, then gingerly reached through the hole he had made and pulled the necklace out by its cream-colored ribbon.

"So much trouble over something so simple," the Queen noted, leaning forward so that she could better inspect it from her position by the shop's entrance. "You know it would have been easier if I had just–"

The Evil Queen froze, one hand in the air, staring at Mr. Hyde. Mr. Hyde stared back at his companion – he had heard it too.

In the back room, Fox's focus was redirected to her own predicament. Silently, she cursed herself. During her inventory, she always made something of a mess, and in her rush to reach the door against which she now leaned, it had escaped her notice that her foot was propped up on a box. That is, until the box in question was scraping – audibly – out from underneath it.

The fairy's heart shot up from her stomach, through her chest, all the way to her throat. She could feel it beating harder than it had in years, and she wondered if the villains outside could hear it as well. Perhaps the Queen would be inclined to ignore the noise. Little as she seemed to mind getting her hands dirty, she was also extremely goal-driven. If she had come here for the necklace, and not for herself, she may be content to leave. But Hyde knew better than to leave it to chance. And Fox had no wand.

"What the hell was that?" Fox heard the Queen inquire. The sound was muffled by the door and she did not bother feeling out with her magic again. Nothing she heard would matter once they found her.

"Well, I imagine it would be easy enough to find out," Hyde commented. Fox heard two sets of footsteps moving toward the door – one heavy stride, one light shuffle. _Go!_ she urged herself. _Poof yourself home. Hide behind some boxes. Don't just_ stand _here waiting to be caught!_ But Fox could not bring herself to move. Even her trembling had ceased.

" _Ah,"_ the Queen sighed appreciatively, "it's been too long since I clipped a fairy's wings." Fox held her breath, mind and heard racing, eyes squeezed shut once more. Her hand tightened on her side. She could feel her ribcage. Her knuckles were pale, her jaw was clenched, her temple pressed into the door. She crushed her other hand into a tight fist.

"Wait." All at once, one set of footfalls silenced. The confident, measured pacing. _Hyde._

Hesitantly, one of Fox's eyes opened, then the other. The Queen's footsteps had stopped as well. "The sun is rising." The fairy realized vaguely that his face must be turned away from the door she was crouched behind. "You said this shop is owned by a fairy?" She could hear the frown in his voice.

"Just what are you thinking?"

"Fairies are early risers." Hyde said it as if it were a given. "And they often have rodent friends." Under different circumstances, Fox may have felt a surge of indignance. Now, she dared not even hope.

"Mr. Hyde, are you afraid of getting caught?" the Queen chided. Her tone was playful, but Fox detected a note of disappointment.

"Of course not, but unnecessary distractions often meet disastrous ends." Slow steps toward the door. "If your Majesty would be so inclined…" Gentle footfalls away from the back room door. A brief pause, then two sets of footsteps moving in sync. The front shop door opened and closed.

And just like that, they were gone.

* * *

Emma glanced down at the table in front of her. She had just finished her breakfast, but there were bowls and plates full of food that still needed to be closed into containers and tucked away into the fridge. Her father had gone all out with eggs, fruit, sausage, bacon, toast, three kinds of pancakes…Emma knew her dad, and he was clearly nervous about something.

"Here you go," said David, sliding yet another plain pancake onto her plate.

"More pancakes," Emma observed. She absentmindedly thumbed the porcelain handle of her coffee mug. It was a simple mug, white with the word _coffee_ in thin black lettering, but it was her favorite. It had been the first thing she bought for her house. _Her house._

The Savior could still hardly believe that she had a home – a physical home with a roof and a sitting room and a front porch. She had lived out of her car for such a long time, and then in her mom's loft. Now every time she walked through the door of the house that she and Killian would share, she looked around in the foyer, amazed at the feeling of space. Here, there was a place for her son, a place for her pirate, a place for _her._ But even more amazing to her was that when she and Killian had returned to Storybrooke from Camelot, the darkness, the Underworld, the _real_ world, she had not thought twice about giving her parents the keys. This home, it was a part of her. And her parents had not even needed to ask to be let into that part of her. Now, sitting at her kitchen table, Emma could feel just how lucky she was to be so content. But as she watched her father's back, knowing that her mom was doing the same over her little brother's head, she could easily sense that something was off. So, she resolved to draw him out.

"Usually I'm lucky to get a lukewarm cup of coffee on your way to work," she noted.

"Can't a father cook for his daughter?" David kept his voice moderate, but his tone was still defensive. Both of the women in the kitchen noticed.

"Sure," Emma replied, "but I'm the Savior, not a Romanian power lifter."

"Enjoy the breakfast," her father shushed, placing one hand on her cheek and leaning her over slightly so he could kiss her head before moving away. She turned in her chair and smiled with gentle accusation.

"This is about Hook." Now at the stove, David answered too quickly.

"No." He tried to keep his tone light, but now his wife cut in.

"David," she chided. Even baby Neal looked over at him. The prince sighed, put his hands on his hips, and turned to face his daughter.

"Fine," he admitted, mildly aggravated. "It's about Hook." Emma glanced over at her mom as David folded his arms and leaned on the counter next to her. "With him moving in things are going to be different," he reasoned. "We're not gonna see you as much." He tried for a smile, but it did not reach his blue eyes.

"Killian being here is not gonna change anything," Emma soothed. "You can come cook me breakfast whenever you want." She heard Henry coming down the stairs and shifted to stand up. "These leftovers, however, will probably last the next month or so."

"This is good." Snow turned to her husband, bouncing Neal on her knee. "Things are getting back to normal." Henry walked into the kitchen.

"Are you ready for your first day back at school, Grandma?" he asked, stopping just beside his grandparents.

"You know it," said Snow, handing Neal off to David. She gathered some folders and loose papers and made for the door with Henry. They both stopped short, however, as Regina walked through it with Dr. Jekyll. Emma had given Regina a key as well, the mayor being Henry's mother too, but it seemed her parents had left the door unlocked.

"Oh, this can't be good," said Snow at the look on Regina's face. It was a look she saw all too often. Now that she was free of the Evil Queen, Regina should have been having the best few weeks of her life. But here she was; at odds with her sister, mourning the death of her lost love, and now – though she would never admit it – terrified of what an alliance between Hyde and the Queen could mean for all of them.

"We need to talk," she told Snow. Emma walked over, followed by David.

"Whatever this is, we'll take care of it. You and Henry get to school," said the prince, half patting, half pushing his wife's arm toward the door. "Remember: back to normal." Hesitantly, Snow and Henry continued on toward the door.

"Be careful," Henry said over his shoulder. Regina reached out and patted his arm before he closed the door.

"What's wrong?" Emma inquired, frowning at Jekyll. "Shouldn't you be at the lab, working on the potion?" She didn't mean for it to sound so sharp, but the last thing she wanted that morning was for something else to go wrong.

"Er, technically it's a serum," Jekyll stuttered, "and I'm afraid there's been a complication."

"It's Hyde," Regina explained. "He's escaped." Emma folded her arms. David frowned. Baby Neal twisted in his father's arms, it seemed, to look at Regina.

"I was at the lab until early morning. When I returned to my room at Granny's…" he pulled a necklace out of his coat pocket by its cream-colored ribbon, "I found this." Briefly, Emma wondered why he had yet to modernize his clothing. Then again, he was helping them defeat the menace who had brought the townspeople to Storybrooke in the first place, so she supposed she should not judge.

She and David leaned forward to examine the necklace. The pendant was a red, cameo oval with a detailed golden frame. What Emma took the most notice of, however, was the way in which Jekyll held it. He had made a small loop in the ribbon, and it was pressed tightly between his fingers, as if he were terrified to drop it. She had seen him hold beakers of dangerous chemicals with less care.

"It belonged to a woman I cared deeply for. Hyde knew, he's trying to taunt me with it." The pain in his voice was evident. Emma knew that tone – it was one she had heard in her own voice whenever she spoke of Henry's father, before she and Killian had begun their relationship in earnest.

Emma nodded her head once. "We need to get you back to the lab. Now we don't just need the serum to defeat the Evil Queen," she glanced at Regina. "We need it to finish Hyde." Under different circumstances, she knew she would feel conflicted about killing them. But Hyde and the Queen were not whole people, they were partsof people – and the worst parts, at that. And that made all the difference.

Just then, Emma's phone vibrated in her pocket. When she took it out to look at it, she frowned. Henry had texted her. The others in her foyer ignored her while she opened and read through the message.

 _forgot to mention this but thought u should know, fox (my lit tutor) knows jekyll. whatever it is she might b able to help_

Emma felt her thoughts darken, as they had when she first realized Regina was the Evil Queen, the day she broke the curse. She really hated when people kept things from her.

"Well, we'll get you back to the lab and go from there," she heard her dad say beside her. "Ashley's busy today, I'll get Neal to the fairies and meet you there." Regina nodded and she, David, and Jekyll all moved to the door. The men left first and Regina hung back. She looked at Emma, who was still standing with her phone out.

"Emma, are you coming?" Regina's voice broke through Emma's reverie and she looked at the mayor.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm coming." Regina glanced down at the phone still in Emma's hand.

"What is it? Did something else happen?" There was dread in her voice, and Emma was quick to reassure her.

"No, it's probably nothing. I just…I'll meet you guys at the lab. There's something I need to do first." Hesitantly, Regina nodded.

"Are you sure everything's okay?" As much as Emma wanted to tell her that everything was fine, she knew she could not. When it came to anything to do with Henry, hiding things from his adoptive mother never ended well for anyone. So she settled for cryptic.

"Let's hope so."


	4. Chapter 4

**I don't really have much to say about this one. Initially, this was the second half-ish of chapter 3. But then I realized that with 1-inch margins, that version of chapter 3 would have been 15 pages long, and that's just too long a post for tumblr.**

* * *

Fox waited by the back room door until the light crept in underneath, and for some time after that. Finally, fighting the tears of relief attempting to fall from her hazel eyes, she moved away from it. But as her arm unwound from its place around her waist, and her head pulled away from the door so that her hand could cover her mouth, the fairy could not help the cries that sounded from her throat. She stumbled back a few steps and slumped into one of the chairs she had been sleeping on, just hours prior. Had it been hours? It may have been days – it felt like it had been days.

Should she call Emma? Fox imagined that both as the sheriff and as the Savior, Emma may like to know about the villains' visit to Three Gem's. Then again, calling Emma would mean having to tell her what Mr. Hyde had taken and to show her the security footage. Fox would have to explain why Hyde was so interested in the old necklace when no-one had so much as glanced at it in the months since it – and therefore she – had been in Storybrooke. And then she would have to tell Emma how she knew all of this. At least for now, that was not an option. For now, there was only one thing she could do.

The fairy took a deep breath through her open mouth, wiped the tears that had escaped her, and let all her air out. Then she stood and waved a hand before her, encircling herself in glittering pink smoke. When the smoke cleared, she was wearing a pink sweater dress – something she could open her shop for business in. Fox took her keyring from a nearby table, and resolutely pushed open her back room door.

Apart from the shattered glass of the standing far corner display, nothing in the shop had been disturbed. The Evil Queen and Mr. Hyde were many things, she supposed, but they were not thieves. At least, not for the sake of thieving. Ignoring the glass shards sparkling on the floor, Fox knelt before her cash register, pulling the skirt of her dress down around her so it rested on the floor. The register sat atop one of the displays in the back of the shop. At the base of the display, beneath the row of locks, was an inconspicuous ridge, and just underneath the seam was a miniscule hole. Fox held her keyring at eye level, turning the keys over one at a time and letting them fall to the side.

After a moment, she found the one she was looking for. It was an unassuming metal rod, thin and somewhat nonsensical. Nevertheless, she waved her hand over it and watched it glow pink as several particles of sparkling fairy dust trailed from her fingertips. Then, just as its glow was fading, she gently pushed it into the secret drawer's circular keyhole.

At first, nothing happened. Then Fox felt the key pulse in her hand and, seconds after that, she heard a click. The drawer popped open. Fox dropped the key ring to the floor beside her and carefully opened the drawer all the way. Sitting inside, in a blue velvet inlay, was a delicate fairy wand. The wand was white, and the only section untouched by a carved spiral was the very base of it, where it was to be held. Just above the mild arch of the handhold were set three stones.

At being acknowledged, a silvery glow seemed to surround the wand, but only for a moment. It faded quickly and Fox lifted it, with a care bordering on reverence, using her fingertips at both ends. She held it up to the light and inspected it. This wand had been her first priority upon her arrival in Storybrooke. Fox had hardly had time to prepare for the curse before it came, and once she was in Storybrooke, she had no memory of any of her few preparations. A newcomer in a strange place, she had resolved to stock up on power, and this wand had been the perfect solution. The second, and middle, stone in it was the same shade of pink as her magic. It represented her own wand; the wand she had started with. The other two stones – the lowest, blue and the highest, green – were the only details on it to suggest that it had ever been three separate objects.

"I was hoping I would never have to use this," Fox muttered to herself.

Just then, she heard the bell over her shop's door chime. Her breath caught in her throat, grip tightening on the handle of her wand as she drew it close to her chest and shut the drawer in which it had been residing with her knee. Fox tried to take a deep breath, but she could not seem to release her shoulders from their tensed position. Finally, she gave up and gritted her teeth. But just as she prepared herself to go on the offensive, she heard a familiar, non-threatening voice.

"Fox, are you here?" Granted, this voice was less than happy, but it was welcome nonetheless. Fox sighed and tucked her wand into her shoe, letting the cloaking spell she had placed on it months prior take effect. She could hardly feel it as she stood and straightened her dress, and she knew that if she looked down she would not be able to see it.

"Emma!" Fox acknowledged with a relieved smile. "What can I do for you?" She took up her key ring and slid it up her arm until it had reached past her elbow. Then she stepped forward to the case in front of her.

"What is he planning, and how do we stop him?" The smile slowly slipped from Fox's face. Maybe it was her own paranoia, but there was no doubt in her mind who the Savior was talking about.

"What do you mean?" she asked anyway, brow furrowed.

"Uh-uh." The Savior shook her head once and strode farther into the room. "I talked to Henry already, so cut the crap. You know something," Emma posited. This wasn't just Emma Swan, Henry's mom. This was the sheriff, the _Savior._ And she did not have much time.

Regina had gone to Gold to ask for help and her dad had taken to the woods to find Hyde and the Queen. She knew Killian was worried for all of them, though he had not said as much. She stopped just in front of Fox.

"What do you know about Hyde? _Tell me,"_ she insisted sharply, slamming her hands flat on the glass before the fairy. Fox jumped back a step in surprise, back straight, eyes widened. An hour earlier, Fox would have been thrilled to see Emma. Now she only felt cornered. They had met once, briefly, when she had come to pick up Henry a few months previous, but she hardly knew her. Now the blonde was staring hard at Fox, as if willing her to tell her tale and she could only stand frozen, hoping Emma would leave her in peace. She took an unsteady breath.

"What exactly did Henry tell you?"

"He said you knew Jekyll, which means you know Hyde," Emma told her impatiently. Slowly, still wide-eyed, Fox shook her head.

"That's not what I told him." The Savior shook her head once and let a short sigh out through her nose. But Fox continued before she could continue pressing her. "I haven't seen either of them in years," Fox explained softly, "and I don't know what Hyde's plan is. I do know his need to torment Jekyll is all-consuming. He and the Evil Queen broke in a couple hours ago to steal Jekyll's girlfriend's necklace." Emma's frown deepened, but the accusation in her demeanor faded.

"Why didn't you call the station?" she asked, confused. Fox replied without taking her eyes off of the blonde before her.

"Because whatever Hyde or Jekyll or _whoever_ is planning, I wanna be as far away from it as possible."

"What do you mean, Hyde _or_ Jekyll?" The fairy's head tilted to one side, almost of its own accord. When she spoke, it was in a tone far too collected. Her hands were pressed to the sides of her pink sweater dress and the Savior could not see them shaking.

"Emma, when you were the Dark One, the only person you ever tried to kill was Zelena. If Hyde is pure evil, that evil had to come from somewhere." Just then, Emma's phone buzzed, and when she checked it her face turned ashen as she looked away from Fox. Her eyes didn't seem to be focused on anything and her head turned slightly downward as she took a step back. The fairy frowned and moved forward. "What is it?"

"It's my dad, Regina got ahold of him. When he was out looking for Hyde and the Queen, they were already on their way to the lab. Now Gold has the serum and Jekyll is with Belle and Killian." Fox's expression froze. When she spoke, her voice betrayed her worry.

"Gold's going after Hyde and the Queen?"

"If he has any reason to think Hyde's gonna go after Belle, that'll be his first priority," Emma reasoned. Before she even finished the sentence, Fox waved a hand over herself and disappeared in a cloud of glittering pink magic. When the smoke cleared, she was wearing more practical clothing – similar to Emma's, if slightly more pink. "If he was as much help to Jekyll as he thinks he was," Emma continued, frowning, "he shouldn't have any issues with taking Hyde out."

"Hyde and the Queen made it to the lab first?" Fox asked.

"Well, yeah, but–"

"Then the serum's going to fail. They're villains, they know better than to leave things to chance," Fox stated almost flatly. Almost. There was the slightest of quivers in her voice. She knew she could not be the nervous shop owner or the kind-hearted fairy just now. Fox had her powerful wand and her black boots and the town was in danger. She was involved, whether she liked it or not. "We need to be there to stop him when it does."

"Gold or Hyde?" Fox glanced at Emma, pulling her wand out of her – now significantly taller – shoe and raising it to hold it vertically, with the tip of it at eye level.

"Indeed," she muttered, just loud enough for the blonde to hear. Then she raised her wand into the air and turned around once. Emma watched as a familiar sheen of magic surrounded the two of them, working its way around all of the interior walls of the shop. It was a protection spell, but this was different from all of the ones Emma had seen. When she used her wand, Fox's magic had a warm, almost orange, tinge to it. Were it not for the growing feeling of unease in her stomach, Emma might have felt comforted to have a fairy so close by her side. Fox turned back to face her, slipping the wand back into her boot. "Gold is a beacon of dark magic, locating him won't be hard. Are you coming?" Emma hesitated for a moment.

"Can you stop him?" There was a pause. The fairy was unsure of how to answer. She had been uninvolved in the town for so long that she had forgotten how it felt to step up and make these kinds of choices. Now at her first chance, her impulse was to say no. But then she thought about Henry, and how he had told her that she was the first person he thought of to help the refugees from the Land of Untold Stories. What did it say when the owner of the heart of the truest believer clearly believed in her?

"…yes," Fox replied.

"Good. I need to make sure my dad is okay." Fox nodded in understanding.

"You should meet me once you know he is. I'll text you, let you know where I am," she assured the blonde. "This may not end well." Emma nodded grimly, a frightened look still in her eye. Both women waved a hand in front of themselves, disappearing in clouds of magic. Upon reappearing, Fox found herself at the docks.

Ahead of her, she could see the fading remnants of Gold's scarlet magic. He must have just arrived, then. She could see the outline of the man beside him. This man was tall. He wore a suit and held the Dark One's dagger at his side. Mr. Hyde. Gold's eyes were fixed on the Jolly Roger, beside the nearest port, but Fox was not looking at him. She was not even looking at Hyde. The fairy was staring at Captain Hook's ship.

At Jekyll chasing the Dark One's ex-wife with an extremely powerful weapon.

For the second time that day, there was a weight in Fox's stomach. The color drained from her face, and though she wanted desperately to move – to _help –_ she found herself rooted to the spot. Gold may have been saying something, but all she could hear was the pounding of her own heart. A chill crept through her jacket, under her turtleneck, that had nothing to do with the breeze coming off of the ocean.

Fox had not even considered that something like this might happen. Her story had yet to be told, and with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in town, she knew it could not remain that way. The fairy had a sinking feeling that this was her story playing out before her widened eyes, but it should have been happening to her. The last thing she had expected was for the others in the town to be anything more than side characters. And the woman aboard the ship should have had nothing to do with Jekyll or Hyde.

She knew Belle – knew what a kind, intelligent woman she was. Fox had known this from the day she was born. And when the time had come, Belle's father knew just the fairy to ask for a blessing. Now Fox stood on the docks, watching her goddaughter beg for her life, and something in her stirred. It was not fear, or sadness, or even disappointment. Fox was _angry._

The fairy was angry at herself for remaining silent when Jekyll and Hyde had come to town. She was angry for lying to Emma and Henry – because that was truly what she had done. And she was angry at herself now for remaining on the docks when her goddaughter needed her. But just as she pulled out her wand once more, she saw a flash of dark leap down from the quarterdeck.

Fox hesitated as the ship's captain himself grabbed Jekyll and threw him aside. Her heart, now lodged in her throat, seemed to be attempting to pull her towards the ship. She wanted to help, but the last thing she needed was a gash from the captain's hook. As she resolved to wait it out, however, something changed. Jekyll was pushed back, but he made no move to defend himself or continue his attack. He was no longer moving at all.

Just then, she heard something much closer than the ship. Reluctantly, Fox's gaze shifted. Hyde had dropped to his knees. He was struggling for breath, Gold glanced down at him, and Fox felt all of the air exit her lungs. Steadily, her heart slowed and made its way back its home in her chest. Now she had another choice to make. One thing she remembered clearly of Hyde was how fast he held to his convictions, his desires. How strong and intelligent he was, how cruel he could be. She remembered his swagger, and the way he used it to hide the gears turning in his mind. How he calculated the most efficient way to get exactly what he wanted, regardless of the cost to others. And she remembered just how much he enjoyed watching his enemies suffer. Clearly, Jekyll was no better than his darker half.

On the other hand, Fox was a fairy. She may have separated from all of the others, even long before the first curse came. But that did not change who and what she was, or what her responsibilities were. It was her duty – regardless of which realm she was in, or with whom her loyalties lay – to protect people and to find another way when there did not seem to be one. Allowing Jekyll and Hyde to be stopped may make her a hero. But standing back and letting them _die…_ that would make her no better than the Dark One.

Fox gritted her teeth and waved her wand before herself, shrinking down to true fairy size. Then, on rose-tinted wings, she flitted off toward the ship.


	5. Chapter 5

… **so…it's been a minute. I'm sorry, I honestly don't know how it happened. I hit a roadblock and then my inspiration dried up and then I got all jaded about OUAT and I kinda forgot why I even started writing this story in the first place for a while. Naturally, once I remembered I was absolutely disgusted with myself for leaving it as long as I did. Fortunately, I never stopped writing completely. This would probably have taken twice as long to write from start to finish if I had.**

 **Anyway, enough about me. Time for some angst, yeah?**

* * *

The fairy was awoken by a dream. It was the same dream she had had in her cell for the previous three weeks. It always started the same way: she was at home.

One moment she could clearly see the cottage she was so familiar with – the dry flowers hanging from the ceiling, the pots and pans dangling from hooks on the walls. The next moment she would be surrounded by a swirl of colors. There were deep sky blues, vibrant forest greens, serene pinks spilling from her own wand, and stark white filling the gaps in between. Then the colors would begin to meld together into two distinct shades. Midnight blue encircled the fairy in its velvety grasp, but the sharpness of the white bled through, as if reminding her that it was still there to guide her.

And then green.

It wasn't a forest green, however, not like the magic she had seen mere minutes before. This was a radiant, almost cheerful green. Once the shock of being in a strange place had faded, the fairy realized it was grass. When she lifted her head to look around she saw that she had arrived laying on her stomach in a meadow filled with the same unmarred shade of green grass, broken only by a little house. It was her own cottage. But how could it be here? Her home was in the forest.

Suddenly, but slowly, the wooden door to the cottage swung open. There in the doorway stood a dark man against a dark background. He wore a dirty white uniform. An orderly of some kind. The fairy was immediately filled with dread, but she felt weighed down. She could not bring herself to stand, even when she heard the orderly's voice.

" _Time to see the warden,"_ it said, yet the orderly standing in the cottage had not parted his lips. The fairy watched his mouth twist into a sick smirk as the darkness from the opening around and behind him spread. This time there was nothing to break the purple-tinged blackness that was beginning to envelop her. And this time it was spreading slowly, practically taunting her. She could hear her own voice in her head, screaming at her limbs to move, begging her legs to let her stand and _run._ But they remained more still than they ever had. The darkness moved in overhead. She could no longer see the grass around her. A shadow fell over her and in the stillness – the silence of the purple and black sea – she heard a quiet laughter. The more she tried to struggle, to stand, to _fight,_ the louder the sinister laughter grew, pressing in on her ears, helping the darkness suffocate her until there was hardly anything left of her to suffocate–

When her eyes sprung open she gasped a harsh, ragged gasp. Faintly, the fairy realized she must have stopped breathing in her sleep. She bolted upright, her hands landing on an unforgiving slab of springs and coils. A mattress? Then she took a few deep breaths, smoothing her thin blanket out under her sweaty palms and frowning. She knew she must still be in the manor, but where within it she had no idea.

Normally when she had bad dreams like this, she could go to her kitchen and make herself a cup of tea. Maybe someone else in the house would find her and she could comfort herself in the presence of another person, reminding herself that it was only a dream. That it was not real. The trouble with this one, however, was that it was very real – or at least, parts of it were. She had been torn from her home and had landed in a strange place. But the place at which she had arrived was a dark estate, formerly used as an asylum by a cruel warden. The asylum had housed many prisoners, including the warden's personal enemies and a stuttering groundsman named Henry Jekyll, who was still there and had at one time been a doctor. According to Dr. Jekyll, the warden employed his orderly – Poole – primarily to keep the _patients_ in check and to prevent Jekyll himself from escaping. While Jekyll had not told her much about the warden, he had mentioned that his name was Mr. Hyde.

It was Mr. Hyde who had, upon her arrival at his estate, locked her in a cage which prevented her from using her magic. No matter how she protested, how she insisted she did not know why he believed her deserving of imprisonment, he simply would not listen. He was certain that she was working for the Dark One. And so, for three weeks she had lived in fear that Poole would forget to bring her thin soups and tepid water, or that when he did come to her cage it would be to interrogate her. The fairy had seen the baton he carried in action, only three days after her arrival in this strange land. Poole had caught Dr. Jekyll visiting her. His heavy weapon crackled with a light she had never seen before, and when it struck the doctor…she would never forget the noise he had made when he cried out in pain. Nor would she forget the shock that had coursed throughout her own body when she reached out to try to help him and her hand touched the metal bars of her cage. The white hot tremor that had shaken her to the marrow in her bones. But it paled in comparison to the expression of agony when it contorted Jekyll's features.

He had not returned to see her for four days after that. When Jekyll returned, he had no answers for her. He did tell her that she seemed to be a strange case. The warden would allow him to speak with her, but not to tell her anything he deemed important. So after three weeks without magic or warmth or solid food, the fairy still had no idea which realm she had fallen into.

And then, three weeks and two days after her arrival, the warden had finally come to see her again. She had not seen, nor heard directly from him since he had locked her inside her cage, but her memory of his appearance had not faded in the slightest. Mr. Hyde was tall. His hair was darker than the doctor's, his complexion paler. But what struck her the most were his eyes. They were dark and bloodshot and when he tapped his knuckles to her cage to wake her, the dim light seemed to liquefy his irises. The moment she saw them, her heart leapt to her throat. Some part of her knew that it was ridiculous, that the worst thing that could happen to her already had, but she could do nothing to stop the way that her stomach caved in on itself. The way her heart made it impossible to swallow. All it took was one look at his face – direct and firm – at the way he held himself with all of the confident swagger in the world, and she was frightened. His voice had not rung in the darkness, but rather it shot straight through the bars of the cage and found its target in the imprisoned fairy.

"My orderly tells me that you have yet to relinquish your story of how you came to this realm." The fairy was afraid to stand, but her neck was screaming at her to stop craning it so far. Slowly, she raised herself up on freezing feet. She had thrown her shoes off into a corner somewhere. They were probably still there. "He seems to think you expect us to believe you don't know." His hands were held behind his back. She swallowed hard.

"I don't," she rasped. Hyde had chuckled darkly, as if he somehow found her amusing.

"You must think me so naïve." His tone could almost have been called a lament. The warden stepped forward, coming closer to her metal prison, and the light shifted across his eyes so that there was only a glint in them. "Which brings me to why I'm here." The fairy's hands had started shaking at that, but she held her ground and tried not to consider that her unwavering stance may have more to do with her frozen feet than any confidence lurking beneath her fear. "You see, I've been looking for a way to best handle the problem of you from the moment you arrived, and it occurred to me that perhaps what we need is a little magic, so…" he pulled out a candle – burned down so far that it was nearly gone – from behind his back, "…I procured this." The candle may have been grey, or it may have been blue. There seemed to be some sort of symbol carved into the wax around the blackened wick, but from more than three feet away, the fairy could not see what it looked like. The foreboding never left her stomach, but a curiosity found its way in alongside it. She tried not to let it show on her face, guessing that this warden would respond better to dread than inquisitiveness. Still, she had had to ask.

"What is it?" Quiet though her voice was, the dry rasp seemed to be clearing away. Not for the first time, she was thankful that she had had Dr. Jekyll to talk to. Otherwise, her only words over the previous weeks would have been the errant plea to the orderly, Poole.

"A memory spell." She could not tell if Mr. Hyde was looking forward to the discomfort he would no doubt be causing her or if he was proud of himself for finding this solution.

 _Or for making me suffer while he looked for one._ The fairy shuddered involuntarily. Hyde smirked.

"All of the memories you have concealed in your mind are going to play themselves out, and you are going to let them…" He seemed to grow taller somehow, his voice taking on a threatening edge. She shrunk back, wide eyes fixed on him. "…or remain here." The warden did not need to ask if she understood. He knew that she did, but she nodded anyway.

He seemed to be satisfied with this response because he looked away from her. Mr. Hyde pulled some sort of metal device out of his pocket and held it over the candle. The fairy flinched as it clicked once, twice, three times. Then, suddenly, a flame came bursting to light on the wick. Hyde replaced the device in his pocket but kept his eyes on the candle, which the fairy could see was purple once illuminated. The top layer of wax melted quickly, but in the flickering light she could see that the symbol etched into it looked like a capital letter B, closed with a swirl at the upper left corner. She could not help it. She drifted closer. Still being mindful of the bars, she leaned that she could see it better. As wired as she was, the edges of her vision were blurred. Yet with her eyes fixed on the candle, she could see it clearly. The way that it threw off light flared with magic. Through the bars she could feel the heat it emanated. The flame was warm like a bubble bath or even the first rays of the morning sun were warm, like it was trying to replace something she had lost for the moment. Belatedly, she realized that that was exactly what it was trying to do. To give the memories living within her mind a new life.

Suddenly, Hyde lifted the candle and blew the flame gently towards his prisoner. His breath should have extinguished the flame. Instead it wafted the scent towards her. Rosemary.

At first, neither of noticed the changes in the large room. Stiff as the fairy was, it was Hyde who first saw how the high ceiling was slowly fading into a lighter shade of grey. Then brown. By the time a close roof had begun to form, the fairy saw the walls shifting as well, drawing inward. Or were those walls? It was the strangest sensation; if she looked hard enough, she could _see_ the bars of the cage she had been forced into by the man before her. She _knew_ they were still in the manor, but the longer she went without blinking, the harder it was to distinguish dirty wall from homey open shelf. Hanging bunches of chamomile, lavender, and sage were close enough that if she reached out she felt sure that she could touch them. When she raised her hand, however, she immediately felt the urge to drop it. Like she had no business being a part of the scene she found herself surrounded by. No business standing on the uneven wooden floor, beside the arched door.

"My cottage," she gasped. The fairy felt more than saw Hyde glance at her sharply.

At that moment, three women came bursting in through the door. All of them were brunette with olive skin and one of them was her. Just as she thought her eyes could grow no wider, she realized that at least one of the women must have walked through her, and the other two had to have walked through Hyde. And yet she had felt nothing, so perhaps they had narrowly avoided her? Either way, none of them seemed aware of their presence.

Hyde watched them intently while the fairy beside him turned away. She knew this scene and could not bear to see it play out any more than she did within her dreams.

"Where is the book?" the tallest of the three asked sharply. She was dressed in green and looking to a short, plump woman in blue.

"How should I know?" the shorter woman asked defensively, her face set in what had to be a familiar frown.

"You were the last one to use it!" the tallest woman retorted. The third woman Hyde recognized as the fairy who stood beside him, dressed in pink and standing at a height between the others'. They all shared a similar expression. There were lines formed around their eyes, deep with worry. Their movements were frantic, rushed, and he could hazard a guess as to why. Outside, what had first appeared through the small windows to be a tranquil, sunny day had begun to cloud over. Hyde heard a rumble in the distance and though he knew the chill he felt was an effect of their true surroundings – the drafty room where his prisoner was held captive – his mind found it easier to attribute it to the gathering darkness.

"I see it, it's on the table!" Not once since discovering her on the grounds of his estate had Hyde heard his caged fairy's voice sound so strong. She was comfortable here.

Surely enough, when the tallest of the women – who seemed to be the leader of the others – followed her pointing finger, she found what she had been looking for. Held up in the dimming light, the book appeared to be a much darker grey than it truly was with faded black lettering on the front. The letters were too faint to be read, but the book itself crackled with a power that would frighten anyone unaccustomed to it.

"I'll find the spell, you two get ready, we don't have much time." The woman spoke with a controlled strain, like she was trying to keep fear at bay.

"We're not gonna make it," the short woman said without cynicism. She was scared.

"Don't say that, Merry!" the woman in pink insisted. "We'll make it, we'll be fine."

"Correction," the leader interjected, staring down at the page before her. _"One_ of us will make it." The gazes of the other two women could not have snapped to her faster.

"What are you talking about?" the middle woman asked.

"This spell only works for one person. Only one of us will make it through the portal." At this, all three women exchanged wide-eyed glances. They were silent for a long moment, their leader's fingers holding tightly to the spell book, the one called Merry clutching a small vial of some dark liquid. Finally, the tallest of them turned fully to face her pink-wearing companion. "It's going to be you."

" _What?"_ the other two chorused.

"Flora, no." The woman in pink was shaking her head and looking as if she might cry, eyes wide and glassy, imploring. "There has to be another way, we'll all go through together, we–"

"There is no other way!" the woman she had called Flora posited, sounding like she rarely raised her voice. _"You_ are the strongest of us. No matter what happens to us, you'll be able to get to her. You'll find her, you have to." Her voice was cracking and Merry seemed shocked to hear it. Another long silence.

"…but you'll both be cursed." It was a weak protestation, voiced by someone who knew they were going to lose.

At that moment, another low rumble sounded. But this time, it was so close it may have come from only a few yards away. It seemed to jolt the leader in green into action.

"Wands, fairies," Flora commanded. She and Merry immediately pulled theirs out. The woman in pink hesitated, seemingly shell-shocked by the noise and the thought of having to leave her companions. But eventually they were all stood in a tight circle, wands held up before them. All of their wands were white and seemed to glow in the growing darkness, each with a gem set just above the sloping handle, corresponding with the color of their dresses. Green, pink, and blue. "Aim at the door." They spread out in front of the table, pointing their wands from arms stretched out towards the wooden door.

Hyde and his prisoner had the sense that they were pointing right at them, and both moved backwards, farther away from one another. Strangely, it was as if they had never moved. The angle from which they were viewing the scene did not seem to change, though they knew they were away from the door and out of the path of any stray magic.

"Clockwise," the leader said simply. The other two must have understood her, however, because they all began swirling their wands as one, moving clockwise. At first, only a few sparks trailed from their wand tips; green, pink, and blue. Gradually, more and more followed, then a steady flow of multi-colored smoke. The smoke seemed to change color just in front of the door and a large, flat, dark blue circle appeared. It rippled in midair and contained strains of white. Once it seemed it could grow no larger, the woman in pink lowered her wand, looking uncertainly first to her left at Merry, then to her right at Flora. Both women looked back at her, and though Flora's eyes were the only ones that held no tears, her face was a mask of distress. "Find our goddaughter, sister."

"Take this with you." Merry pressed the vial she had been holding into her sister's hand, clasping her fingers around it and hanging on, unwilling to let go.

"Be careful," Flora cautioned. The woman in pink nodded, tears leaking from the corners of her hazel eyes, and took the taller fairy's hand in her own. For a brief moment, the three sisters stood hand in hand. But then the moment was shattered when they heard a crack of thunder directly overhead. When the middle sister looked up, she saw dark smoke filtering in through a weakening ceiling. "Go!" There was no more time to argue. She dropped her sisters' hands and strode forward toward the portal. With only a fleeting glance back at them, she found herself swallowed up in a whirl of midnight blue and stark white. But not before she saw a bolt of blackness shoot through the ceiling, striking the portal and firing a white burst of magic back into the room. Two streaks of light reached out like greedy fingers, hungry for magic and finding two fairy wands, still raised to help the owner of their sister wand.

The last thing the fairy saw was both of her sisters seize up, then fall to the floor.

" _No!"_

That scream echoed around the hall, reverberating around inside the cage and bouncing off of the walls like they were rejecting it. The imprisoned fairy's throat had never known anguish like it before, and it was through eyes burning with tears that she saw her captor stumble back a step. The warden caught himself just as he teetered on the edge of one of the stairs leading to the cage. He was holding the candle stand between two tension-white fingers, the flame having gone out only moments before, judging by the wisps of smoke still loitering around the wick. The symbol he had carved into the wax had melted completely away and the faint smell of rosemary hung in the air between him and the fairy, who had also fallen back a step. She was barely standing, recognizing for the first time that night that she was exhausted. She had lost her sisters, been thrown into a cage, and had no real food or shelter for what had been weeks, but had felt like months.

Hyde's eyes found her just as she began swaying, looking at nothing in particular. If she had been looking at him, she would have noticed something remarkable: Mr. Hyde raised his eyebrows in something other than reproach. During none of his time with her had he done that – looked even vaguely concerned for her wellbeing, if only vaguely.

Taking his time, he gently set the candle down, and he pulled out his keyring. He turned the keys over one by one until he found a large, dirty copper key. By the time he did, the edges of the fairy's vision were blurring. Sparks danced everywhere she looked, like she was in a tunnel and only just seeing light for the first time in days. Her breath was growing shallow and echoing through her head. This could only mean that the spell had been cut short before it could finish on its own. The magic itself had been well done, but the warden clearly did not know the first thing about timing. He had invaded her mind and taken what little energy – what little strength – she had left.

Still moving as if he had all the time in the realms, Hyde pushed the key into the lock in the door of the cage and after a few turns, he pulled the door open. Just as the fairy was about to fall, he stepped forward and caught her. Had she been more aware, she may have cursed him for the smooth bastard he truly was.

"I tried to go back," she mumbled, barely intelligible to Hyde, close as his ears were to her mouth.

"Of course you did." She did not notice the sarcasm in his voice. He shifted her in his arms, half-kneeling and half-standing, trying to figure out how best to maneuver her.

"My sisters…spell should have worked."

"It did," he muttered, looking out towards the still open door to the hallway. Hyde thought about calling out to Poole, but decided against it. Somewhere in the recesses of his mind, close to where Jekyll was tucked away, he realized that this was what awkwardness must have felt like.

"No," she groaned. Hyde thought she could not have known what she was saying, but she was adamant nonetheless. When he glanced back down at her, he noticed that there were tears rolling down the sides of her face. "I failed…I…couldn't find her…" And with that, she was out cold.

The fairy did not wake when Hyde made his decision to lift her fully into his arms, tucking one arm under her knees and wrapping the other around her shoulders. Her dress really was dirty, but somehow still soft under his fingertips. He must have imagined that her hand was holding tightly to the lapel of his coat. She did not stir while he carried her with ease through the halls of the manor, not once during their walk up one flight of stairs and into a room, lightly dusted from disuse but cleaner than any of the rooms downstairs. With less care than he perhaps could have, he deposited her onto a mattress with very little give, then turned away to leave. Maybe it was her complete silence behind him, or maybe it was the cold seeping into his arms where she had been only moments before, but for some reason he felt compelled to go back and drag a thin blanket over her. He would have to tell Poole to bring her a sweater. Or perhaps he should leave it to the good doctor. It had been too long since his groundsman had had anything remotely worthwhile to do.

This time, when Hyde turned to go, he managed to follow through. It was only when he had reached the bottom of the stairs and was returning to her cage to retrieve his candle that he fully comprehended what had just taken place. He stopped, one hand on the banister, and wondered at what should have occurred to him much earlier.

 _What the_ hell _did I help her for?_

Several hours later, when the fairy had dreamed her recurring nightmare and opened her eyes once again, it took her a few moments to notice what had awoken her. It was only when the source of the noise spoke up that she saw it. Or rather, she saw _him._

"Oh!" she heard from the doorway to her right. Her head swiveled around to look at the figure standing there, inching its way back. "Er, pardon…" the man stuttered.

"Dr. Jekyll," she acknowledged, her voice even raspier than it had been the night before. Now there was light streaming through the door and patches of lackluster brightness on the floor in front of the small, grubby window. She tried to clear her throat, but it only served to stick the back of her mouth together in a silencing wall.

"Yes, I, er…I was just…" He hovered in the doorway, unsure of what to do or where to go. Upon closer inspection, she could see that he was holding what seemed to be a short pile of wrinkled clothing, a pair of boots, and a glass. She tried to speak again, but all she could manage was a near-silent mangled exhalation. Then she tried, again unsuccessfully, to clear her throat once more. This seemed to jolt the doctor into action. "Oh, here." He stepped forward carefully and held the glass out to her, and she gratefully accepted it. A few slow sips of lukewarm water later, she almost felt like her throat had been sanded down. It was enough for her to form speech again. "Any better?"

"Yes, thank you." Jekyll noticed that her voice was not quite back to full capacity, but it was certainly better than it had been even the last time he had seen her. Absently, he wondered just how dehydrated she was.

"Are you alright? What happened? Poole refused to tell me why you had been moved," he haltingly explained, brow furrowed. His head was angled so that he could see her better and his shoulders were slouched so as to appear less intimidating. Even still, he towered over her, and she lightly patted the unyielding mattress beside her. Hesitantly, he glanced over his shoulder, the fairy spoke up.

"Sit, please."

"I shouldn't-I…I'm not supposed to stay for long–"

"You're a doctor, yes?" she asked in a rare interruption. His questioning gaze returned to her.

"Yes," he answered.

"So act doctorly," she suggested.

"But I'm not that kind of doctor." She gave him a tempered look, which he imagined was meant to come off as stern, but only looked like a weak plea. When he paused again, she repeated herself.

"Sit down, Dr. Jekyll." He had told her before that she could call him Henry. She had ignored him each time, so he did not bother to repeat himself. Instead, he set the boots down on the floor and gingerly sat beside her, allowing her to adjust her position farther in towards the wall before rephrasing his earlier question.

"What happened?" The fairy took a short, deep breath.

"The warden came to see me. He cast a spell that allowed him to see into my memories. He wanted to know how I got here," she gestured loosely to their surroundings. Jekyll continued to gaze at her with concern.

"To the Land of Untold Stories," he inferred. He could practically _see_ her ears perk up as she abruptly lifted her head to look at him.

"Is _that_ where we are?" All of the color in the doctor's face drained away. "I wasn't sure this place even existed, I can't believe it's real," she mused.

"Oh no-no, no, I didn't mean to tell you that." His voice was filled with alarm and he was leaning away from her now.

"No-hey, it's okay." Without thinking, she reached out with the hand not holding her glass of water and wrapped it around his free hand, weakly attempting to hold him in place. Whether because the contact startled him or because he just wanted to stay put, it worked. "Who am I going to tell?" It was a bad joke, but he chuckled anyway, feebly. She gave him a warm half smile and went on. "Anyway, I think I passed out once the spell was over. He must have brought me here, but I don't know how."

Jekyll thought he knew. But his fellow captive had been through enough; he could spare her the details. Especially when those details shed light on a softer, more…well, Jekyll-esque side to the formidable Mr. Hyde. He cleared his throat.

"Yes, well, I am glad to see you out of that cage." He gave her a drawn smile of his own, and a flicker at the corner of her mouth renewed her own. Then he lifted his hand away from hers to place on top of the stack of clothes he had brought with him. "These are for you," he explained, setting them down on the mattress. "I have been informed that you are as free to roam as I am, provided you stay away from the lab." Her brows knitted together immediately and he seemed to consider something. "And I don't imagine you will be straying too close to that cage that the warden kept you in."

"He doesn't want me locking myself away again?" Jekyll raised his eyebrows as if to confirm it. "I would think he'd be relieved if I did."

"And I would not." It was a simple statement in and of itself, but the fairy heard it loud and clear. She knew that when people went through hardship together, they often bonded through it, but she had never experienced it herself. Not until arriving in this strange land. She gave him an even warmer smile than before. Jekyll nodded to her once, amiably, and stood. Just before exiting the room, he spoke up again. "I imagine I will be easy enough to find," he said.

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 **Please leave a comment, if you like!**


	6. Chapter 6

**So, much like when I wrote chapter 3, I was writing up a storm, finally finished, got the editing and formatting done, and then looked at the page and word counts. 21 pages, 9,154 words. That's long enough to qualify as a novelette. As such, I got some advice from a fanfic writer who I greatly admire and was advised to chop it into two chapters so long as it did not disrupt the flow of the writing. Given the way that I wrote it, this unfortunately this means – much like with chapters 3 and 4 – this chapter is shorter than the last one. Not by much, just over a page. Maybe that's a good thing, maybe it isn't, but there's really nothing I can do about it.**

 **Anyway, leave a comment if you like! (p. l. e. a. s. e.)**

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The warden had other ideas.

Later, the fairy would wonder how she failed to hear the struggle as she finished her water and changed out of her dirty dress. She would remember how surprisingly soft the sweater Jekyll had given her was and how the trousers were just a little too loose. But the sound of the doctor himself attempting to escape from the impossible strength of Hyde's orderly somehow never drifted up the steep staircase to her small room. (She refused to think of it as a cell.) Jekyll's confused shout, wondering why the warden wanted to make a reappearance so soon went unheard. And she would certainly have remembered hearing Poole force a clear blue serum down his throat, if she had.

All she knew was that when she had fastened her new old boots, she found herself descending the stairs to an eerily hushed hallway. The ceiling of the hallway was almost as high as the one in the room that housed her former cell. The whole floor seemed to be filled with silence and even the lightest of her steps echoed all the way from one end to the other. She must have made her way through here the night before, but she still could not remember how.

Most of the doors along the hall were closed. Jekyll had told her she was free to roam as she wished, however she had no desire to press her luck. Nor did she have any real desire to see what might be behind some of these doors. Hyde was a warden, this was a mental institution – or had been, as the case was – and the fairy was willing to bet her, typically hidden, wings that there were some nasty sights to behold in more than a few of these rooms. Which made the room she had awoken in even more peculiar. And had she chosen it, or had the sinister warden actually done something…almost considerate?

The more she thought about it, the less sense it made. Hyde had shown nothing short of complete disregard for her health, her safety, or her feelings from the moment she arrived in this _Land of Untold Stories,_ so why suddenly decide to help her? He had always shown a decided interest in how and why she had arrived. He had even entertained the possibility that his initial assumption – that she was working for the Dark One – had been incorrect. The warden wanted the truth, and he would have done anything to get it.

Using the memory spell had been clever; the fairy was unsure that even she would have thought of that. But his execution had been either sloppy or purposely uncaring. Cutting a spell off before it was finished running its course was dangerous, even for the most seasoned of sorcerers. She doubted even Rumplestiltskin would try that. Magic, once released into the world, had a mind of its own. Whether Hyde knew that or not, she did not know. But assuming he did not, it was plausible that he was trying to help the both of them.

As she pondered this, the fairy drifted down the hallway. Suddenly, a scraping noise pulled her out of her reverie. It was a singular scratch, most probably the heel of a shoe being dragged across the stone floor. In the cavernous hall, it might as well have been a large metal chain being dragged across a room. She jumped, both feet actually leaving the ground for a second, and when she looked to where the sound seemed to have come from, she saw the first open door she had noted since reaching this floor. There may have been more that she missed, but she had no real desire to turn around and look again. Though there was cold sweat beading on her forehead, she knew if she continued on down the hall, she would be looking over her shoulder after each step. So, she took a deep breath and stuck her head into the room.

It was a coldly decorated parlor. Two armchairs, a short table, a large desk. A few feet away from the window over the desk sat a fireplace that had clearly gone unused for at least a century. She did a long visual sweep of the room before actually walking into it. When she looked to her left again, she saw a tall bookshelf in the corner. It must have been the warden's; all of the books and baubles were on the top two shelves, above Dr. Jekyll's eye level and probably Poole's as well. There were one or two interesting-looking instruments sitting up there, but not interesting-looking enough for the fairy to get too close to them. There were no other doors that she could see, though she would not have put it past anyone she had met so far to have a secret passageway or two. Nothing seemed out of place in the parlor, but then, she supposed, she wouldn't really know. The window was closed and she knew nobody had walked by her, so where had the noise come from?

She fidgeted with the ends of her sleeves, attempting to fight off the draft from the window, shooting through the fireplace. Drifting farther into the room, she heard a soft flapping noise coming from a small table between the armchairs. Glancing over sharply, the fairy saw the pages of a book rustling in the drafty air. She pulled her sleeves down, more completely wrapping the cuffs around her knuckles and twisting them between her fingers, and stepped carefully over to the side table. It was a hardcover, perhaps one hundred pages of stiff, unrefined paper, and she could sense a dull energy floating around it. The aura itself almost _felt_ grey. The cover had been flipped open, possibly by the draft running through the room. That may have been the scraping noise she heard. As she looked on, two more heavy pages flipped their way over from one side of the book to the other. When they settled, she could see a lightly sketched drawing of the candle Hyde had used to cast the memory spell. But that was not what caught her eye.

Just over the sketch rested a light beige ribbon, attached to a red, cameo oval set inside a detailed golden frame. A small voice in the back of her mind told her that she should walk away. That she had no business being here and she should simply go outside. It had been too long since she felt grass, and this was not healthy. More than that, it was dangerous here. And the fairy could not shake the feeling she was being watched, whether by Poole or by the ghosts of _patients_ past, it hardly mattered. She knew all of these things. But her interest kept her rooted in place, and her curiosity forced her hand to reach out. With more care than was likely necessary, she lifted the necklace away from the spell book's pages. It was strangely warm, and upon closer inspection she could see that the ribbon had small gold flecks. There was no clasp, and it was tied in a tight knot. Whoever this belonged to must have had a very slender neck.

 _And a fairly small head, unless they never took it off._ The fairy shuddered to think of what may have happened to them that had caused them to leave this behind. But the warden was clearly taking good care of it. She knew the aura of the spell book she had found it in, it was protective. There was only reason she had not been thrown through the air and landed in what she was sure would have been a rather nasty position: spell books liked her. It had always been that way, and she had never known why.

When she and her sisters had decided to start one, she had been the one to find the journal they used. She had spent hours writing in it. It was almost a hobby; she reached for it when she could not sleep, when she was feeling inspired, when she simply had a free moment with nothing else to do. And she understood spell books. They were temperamental. The magics recorded within them had to play nicely with one another or it would be chaos. If the magic flowed well, it was more powerful than any one spell on its own, and it could ensure its own safety better than any locked cabinet door could. That, she had learned the hard way.

Lost in thought, the fairy did not realize she had been standing still and staring at the necklace. She was holding it at eye level, visible to anyone who may have happened by. So when Poole walked past the parlor door and glanced inside, he got a clear view of her gazing at one of the only three things in the world that the warden cared about.

"What are you doing in here?" She jumped when she heard his sharp voice, feet once again leaving the ground, neck nearly snapping with how rapidly her head turned up to look at him. Her pointer finger and thumb closed even more tightly on the ribbon of the necklace, pulling it in towards her body, almost defensively. Involuntarily, she started stepping back.

"I-I was told I could…Dr. Jekyll said–"

"Put that down!" Poole ordered. The fairy should have set the necklace back down. She should have dropped it. She should have run. But she could not seem to force herself to do any of those things. Her legs refused to obey her, her fingers would not loosen on the creamy ribbon. Even as she saw him flick the switch on the baton he had used on Jekyll just weeks earlier, her body would not obey her will. _"Did you hear me, girl?"_ She flinched, eyes wider than they had ever been. He advanced on her, practically charging her. She continued to stumble back, but there was nowhere to go. Her back hit the mantle. He raised the baton. The electricity crackling across its surface would have been visible from yards away.

"No-no, please don't," she squeaked. Poole looked no less murderous. His own eyes were bulging, his knuckles tight on the weapon, his jaw rigid. She slid down the wall, still somehow clutching the necklace. _"Please?"_ It was no use. She curled into a ball and she drew her hands to her chest. A breath she could not release burned within her lungs. Her ears rung with the blood rushing through them.

"Poole," called an almost pleasant voice. If the fairy's eyes had been open, she would have seen a pair of shoes in the doorway. "That's quite enough of that."

"I've got her. She was trying to escape."

"From the fifth floor? That hardly seems practical." There was a pause. She opened her left eye, daring to peek up at the orderly. His feet were still turned towards her, but the top half of his body was twisted to face the other way. Slowly, she opened her right eye as well. If she bent her neck just a little farther, she could see under the side table. And when she looked, she saw…

 _What?_

"I believe the good doctor informed her that she was free to roam. That is, after all, what I told him to do," said Mr. Hyde, rambling casually into the room. He had his same smirk – a nasty, miniscule turning up of the corners of his pale pink mouth, just wide enough to cast shadows underneath his cheekbones. He was gaunt in the daylight, as if he did not belong to it.

"Sir?"

"I left him a note-oh, look at her, Poole. You've frightened her," he observed, glancing down at her over his orderly's shoulder. But instead of looking down at his almost-victim, Poole turned fully to face his employer. Hyde's eyes bored into the fairy's. She could not help but stare right back. His seemed more bloodshot than they had been the night before. "I hardly think she's capable of escaping in this state, do you?" With that, he swept his gaze away from hers and returned it to Poole, who seemed not to know what to say. The fairy could not see his face, but if his movements when he switched off the baton were anything to go by, he was half as frightened of the warden as she was. This would have perplexed her, had she not been so focused on slowing her heart rate to its normal, more or less steady beat. Hyde blinked once, slowly, and looked at the fairy on the floor again. "Now, get out." Poole only hesitated for a moment, just to make sure Hyde was still talking to him. He was.

The fairy heard Poole leave, but she was not looking at him. Her wide eyes were fixed on Hyde. There was an infinity in those few seconds wherein every thought she had had out in the hallway ran through her head all at once, at least thirty times. Was this all a trick? Had he known how dangerous cutting spells off early could be? Or was he really trying to help her? Help the both of them? And where had he gotten that spell book on the table?

The wheels were turning in his own mind as he studied her. There were a number of options available to him now that he knew she was no threat to him. Knowing that what was likely the only family she had was now dead made it even easier. He could kill her, if he wanted to. It would be easy, all he would have to do would be to throw her out the window. He had once lifted a three hundred pound strongman, the struggling fairy would be no great challenge. Had he not stepped in when he did, Poole – he was sure – would have done it for him. _Why had he stopped him?_

Maybe he did not want her dead. Locking her away in a cell somewhere for the rest of her days seemed redundant, but if there was even a chance she could be useful, he would still want to keep her around. Perhaps…perhaps he could use her. In her memories, her sister had told her she was the strongest of the three of them. Even her tears had seemed to shimmer with magic. He had spent the days following her arrival solving the problem of her. Might she be able to help him solve the problem of Jekyll?

The answer, he knew, was yes. And to do that, he needed her alive and only just as afraid as his orderly was. Decision made, he broke the silence.

"Apologies, I believed my orderly knew of your new freedom, such as it is. He has always seemed so well-informed." The fairy could not tell if that was meant to be a quip. Either way, she decided it was not funny. Once her mouth began responding again, it seemed to only want to know one thing.

"Where is Dr. Jekyll?" she asked timidly, voice still bouncing off of the dirty walls. That, Hyde seemed to think was funny. He chuckled darkly, stepping closer. He was still beside the armchairs, more than eight feet from her, but the fairy pressed herself farther back into the wall all the same. Seeing this, he actually stopped.

"You needn't worry for the doctor, he is quite safe. I assure you." There was something malicious in the way he said _safe,_ he had practically hissed it. But Hyde had respected her fear. He had likely just saved her from Poole. And the fairy was becoming increasingly certain that he had somehow carried her to her room and tucked her in the previous night. Pressing the issue of his groundsman was clearly not the most tactful move to make at that moment. Instead, she cleared her throat quietly, wiping at her clammy forehead with her empty hand. Come to think of it, she probably should do something with the necklace still pressed between her fingers.

"Could you open the window a little?" she asked. "It seems warmer out there than it is in here." From the floor, the window over the desk looked extremely wide. The panes themselves were thin, undistorted glass framed by cylindrical steel bars. The metal bars were flush with the window and perhaps twice the thickness of the glass. Gentle reinforcement, so that the glass would not shatter too badly if it were struck.

"As you wish," he nodded to her, almost respectfully. Then he turned his back to her and moved to the window. Without looking down, the fairy stuffed the necklace into the pocket of her trousers. One of her fingertips brushed against something else in there, smooth and warm, but she had no time to look. She would have to find someplace to leave the necklace later. Or perhaps…

Hyde, it seemed, was not quite done with her. His arms were stiff when he opened the window, barely needing to lean over the desk to reach it. After a brief moment of wrestling with the locking mechanism, he pushed it open. It creaked loudly, and the fairy flinched again. "Now…" he took his hands back from the window and turned to face her, standing beside the desk, "…on your feet." Slowly, almost arthritically, she stood. She found she did not know what to do with her hands, so she pulled the sleeves of her sweater down over them again, twisting the soft fabric between her fingers. "I imagine you must be suffering a bit of confusion as to exactly where you are."

 _The Land of Untold Stories,_ her mind immediately supplied. But she could not tell him she knew that without risking Jekyll's _safety,_ so she swallowed it back and nodded.

"You have an excellent imagination." Dignity. Grace. The warden raised an eyebrow.

"No, you're not. Jekyll told you." He spat the doctor's name, breaking from his normal rich drawl to do it. The fairy tried to force a wrinkle into her brow, but she was simply too afraid of him. Regardless of what he may or may not have done for her over the past twenty-four hours, the fact remained that Mr. Hyde was a fast, strong, formidable warden who had kept her caged for weeks.

"I–" He took a step forward and she fell silent.

"Don't lie to me." She swallowed again and nodded quickly. "Your sisters' portal misfired and with nowhere else to bring you, it brought you here." She nodded once more. "And now you are terrified, confused, and alone." Her silence was enough of an agreement for him. Hyde's tone was deliberate. Each word fell like a hammer striking her eardrums. This had to be the lead for something horrible. An announcement that she was to remain here forever. That there was no escaping this land or, worse, he would not allow her to. That he no longer had any use for her, now that he knew she was not his enemy. So what he told her next nearly sent her tumbling back to the floor. "I know exactly how you feel."

… _what?_

"The doctor and I faced a similar predicament when we arrived in this glorified cage," he ground out. The fairy's breathing was returning to a more regular tempo. _In…out. Push…pull._

"Why are you here?" she asked. This Hyde seemed less likely to leap for her jugular if she let her guard down than the Hyde who had locked her in that cage down the hall. Perhaps it was the light through the open window, or the fact that he had just saved her life. He was all imposing banter, always ensuring that his back was to the parlor's door and his eyes were on her. But he was not quite as feral as he had seemed to be. There were no more desperate silences wherein he left her to figure everything out for herself, often to no avail. And there were things that she needed to know. Still, it was surprising that Hyde seemed all too prepared to answer her.

"Jekyll." He spat the name again, as if he could not wait to get it out of his mouth. Then he began pacing; he went wide but the fairy still noticed he was moving closer. He could not have expected that she would fail to see it. "We had a home, a life, work," he enunciated, watching her slowly counter his steps, "everything to live for." He stilled, standing just behind the armchair farthest from her. She had moved across the front of the fireplace and was now standing a short ways down the wall from the window, barely touching the plaster. "And then Jekyll destroyed it."

"…how?" Hyde gestured to the desk, indicating that she should look. Reluctantly, she risked a quick glance away from him. Sitting atop the dark, scratched wooden surface was a single beaker of clear blue liquid. The fairy frowned. "I don't understand. What is that?"

"That," Hyde said, "is a serum. It separates one from all the parts of them that they would prefer to ignore." It could have been a threat, but it did not sound like one. Her frown deepened. "The good doctor's creation."

"So…so, Dr. Jekyll created a potion to separate good and evil." She looked back up at Hyde, who had not moved. "And that's a bad thing?"

"It can be." _That_ sounded like a threat. "He used it before it was finished, and one cannot have light without the dark. So, when light finds itself without darkness…" he took a step nearer to her, and this time she could not will herself to step back, "…it makes its own." She did her best to make it seem like he had all of her attention, and he did have most of it. There was, however, a part of her that was very interested in the open window to her right.

"And, what, he did something bad?" she inferred. Hyde took another step closer; one that carried him to the armchair nearest her. There was still a decent distance between them, but not as wide as the fairy would have liked. She needed to get away. She needed to find a way out. But how could she make it past him? All he would need to do in order to stop her would be to reach out an arm.

"Something that can't be undone." She had been mistaken. This _was_ the same Hyde who would attack her if she let her guard down. And he was drifting closer. "And now he's paying the price." With that, the warden reached up and lightly tapped the back of his head. The fairy's mouth dropped open before any sound came out as she finally understood.

"The serum," she gasped. "You use it to control him." Her voice was nearly a whisper, eyes so wide they were becoming glassy. "That's why he's so afraid of you." If it was at all possible, Hyde's irises grew darker, the redness grew more bloodshot. She did not know when he had gotten this near to her, but he was barely three feet away and she could now feel the warmth radiating from him. From this close, and the way he was gazing down at her face, she doubted he would notice that her fingers had ceased their twitching, or that she was now curving her hand to reach two fingers into her sleeve.

"As well he should be." Her focus flittered all over his face. "But the serum isn't complete. That's where you come in," he told her. His tone was hushed, but he did not seem to know how to truly whisper. She hardly took notice. "You are a powerful fairy, I've seen it. And I need your help." As inconspicuously as she could, she took a deep breath, then nodded, eyes wide. Perhaps it was out of nervousness that her voice leapt back to a normal volume for speech when she spoke.

"Interesting," she deadpanned. Hyde hardly had time to note that her tone did not match her expression because, at that moment, she whipped her wand out from her sleeve and slashed at him. The movement was violent, even in the limited space between them, and the warden found himself sliding back across the floor. This predicament would not have been too drastic, except that the skid sent him into the bookshelf by the door. And that shelf was tall. She strode forward to face the desk as he was propelled into it. Hyde managed to shield his eyes before the shelf's contents crashed down upon him, followed shortly by the structure itself. He might have cried out, but she was not paying attention. She had turned away, toward the window. Then she raised her wand.

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 **Update days are gonna be on Mondays, most likely Monday nights, from here on out (hopefully).**


	7. Chapter 7

**Look at me, updating on time for once.**

 **Brief moment of nostalgia: On Friday, October 28** **th** **, 2016 around 1 o' clock in the morning, I wrote the middle part of this chapter. Back then, I wasn't planning on making this into a story. The writers had just killed off Jekyll and Hyde and I was really upset, so I did what fanfiction writers do best. I made it better. Fox's name didn't mean anything to me because I didn't yet know which fairy tale character I wanted her to be, and she was totally different. Initially, I imagined her as this posh English fairy with a very formal speech pattern and a stoic demeanor (oh how things have changed). To think I'm actually making something of those beginnings is something I'm really proud of.**

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" _I want to show you the end of our story. And I want to watch you suffer."_

The Dark One had known as soon as he heard those words that the day would not end well. Of all the enemies he had faced, Mr. Hyde was not the cleverest, nor the bravest. But he may have been the most stupid. His hands had been tied for the moment, but he had been sure to warn the tall monster of what was to come once they were not. Or at least, he had tried.

" _You see, there's one final twist:_ I _am not the monster you need to worry about."_

Hook. The Charmings. The Evil Queen. Had it been anyone else aboard that ship, Gold may not have even cared whether Hyde was the monster they should fear or not. In fact, if he thought he could gain something from their peril, he may have even helped Hyde gain his own prize. But Belle was…Belle was Belle. She was kind, with a forgiving soul and warm eyes and a spirit that shot up in defense when she or someone she loved needed it. For a long time, that had been him.

" _I think you'll find Jekyll has_ quite _the temper."_

Seeing Belle call out for him to lift the spell, he knew everything had changed. Logically, he knew that she was too far away for him to see anger or contempt or anything else that may have been in those blue eyes of hers, but the logical part of his mind had been silenced, and he could see it. When he had sensed magic behind him, felt someone else enter the scene, he actually thought about calling out to them, begging them to help Belle. But he couldn't force himself to say anything other than a plea to the man beside him. Insistence that she had nothing to do with Hyde's anger at him.

" _Clearly, she does."_

The price of leaving the Land of Untold Stories and letting this would-be monster from the deep and his weaker half hang should never have had to be the woman he loved. Not when she was so innocent in all of this. When her only crime had been letting him too far into her heart before she realized that, no matter how hard he tried, he would always fail her. Just as he was doing now.

A part of him hated the relief he felt when Hook intervened. The larger part of him would not have cared if Cora, Hades, and Peter Pan had joined forces from beyond the grave – whatever grave that may be – if it meant Belle was safe. And when he looked to his right and saw Hyde drop to his knees, his grip on the dagger weakening by the second, he hardly even noticed the brief sparkle at the corner of his eye.

Gold was satisfied. Smug. So it wasn't until he noticed Hyde gasping for air and actually succeeding once more that he bothered to spare the ship a glance. This time, it was a flash of pink that caught his eye. A dash of glitter. _Gnat._ Gold just knew he should have killed all of Storybrooke's fairies when he had the chance. Then again, he supposed this one was different. For one thing, he could not imagine Henry would have been too happy to find that his favorite shop owner was no longer among the living.

For once, Gold had no time to react before he felt the pull of the dagger again. But this time, it was not wielded with malcontent. The fairy rose from the ground beside Hyde, towards whom she kept a hand held out, encouraging him to stay down for the time being.

"And what can I do for you, dearie?" Gold whispered resignedly, staring at the dagger in her hand. She kept her eyes trained on him and her hands perfectly still. While she knew he could not just take the dagger from her, it never hurt to err on the side of caution.

"You can start by bringing the good doctor to his doppelgänger's former cell and chaining him in. Don't forget to lock the door on your way out, and do not pass go." There was none of the usual warmth in Fox's voice. Normally, even when she was flustered or stressed, there was some amount of tenderness in her tone. Now it was strictly business, and some steel, as well. Gold waved his hand and disappeared in a cloud of scarlet smoke.

Despite his hatred of being controlled, Gold found that doing the swarthy fairy's bidding was actually rather enjoyable. He kept the dialogue between himself and the stuttering doctor at a minimum, ignoring his pleas to be heard out and only pausing in the task of exiting the cell when Jekyll insisted there had been a misunderstanding.

But, well, some things are best left to the imagination.

Only upon his return to the docks did Gold begin to feel irked that somebody held his leash. The lady in question did not seem to have moved an inch, remaining stoically on her feet, facing away from Hyde and watching the Jolly Roger. Belle seemed to be doing alright. Fox didn't look at Gold when he appeared, but there was no doubt she was speaking to him when she opened her mouth.

"You should never have cast that protection spell."

"Are you suggesting it was my fault that Jekyll attacked Belle?" Fox thought he sounded a little too defensive.

"She only panicked because she knew she couldn't escape," she snapped, finally looking at him with hard eyes. "What if Hyde had managed to break through your spell?" Gold looked away, attempting to hide the distress on his face. "What if he had Molotov cocktailed the ship? What if he had gotten someone else to do his dirty work _for_ him?"

"And what's that supposed to mean?" He looked up to face her again.

"We all know Storybrooke had no shortage of people who'd _love_ to get their revenge on you." _Obviously,_ she mentally tacked on.

"I've made my–"

"Oh, shut up," she ordered impatiently. Gold had no choice but to obey. "Look," she asserted, "ever since I arrived in this town I've watched you all fight your battles. I've kept my head down, haven't done a thing." She paused and tilted her head. "Now it's your turn. Stay out of this one." Gold had never heard her tone so forceful before. Fox held up the dagger. "So, Dark One," Gold straightened unconsciously, forcing an unaffected look onto his face, "unless there is a direct, impending threat present to Belle or her child, one that you haven't foreseen or caused…you're not gonna hurt Dr. Jekyll _or_ Mr. Hyde. Or me, for that matter," she added as an afterthought.

He met her eyes then. She could see the wheels turning, trying to find a loophole. And she was sure he would discover one, so she added another clause.

"Now, I'm sure you'll waste no time in trying to find a way around this," the corner of his mouth twitched, "so I'm not gonna tell you where Hyde will be." She pulled her wand out of her boot and waved it in the air, pointed upward at nothing in particular. Even in the sunlight, as bright as it was, Gold could see a small cloud of pink and gold glitter appear and hover around her wand tip for just a moment. When it dissipated, she kept her wand out but lowered it to her side. "Now there's a protection spell on Jekyll's cell. He'll be moved somewhere safer soon." Gold glanced away from her, looking irked. "Should anything happen to either of them, I know where to find you. I really don't want to hurt you, but if I have to I can and I will."

Gold froze then, attention immediately back on her, and Hyde's eyes widened. This was not like Fox. She was a fairy in the truest sense, her aim had always been to minimize suffering. To help the people around her. Gold doubted she had ever before uttered a single threat in her life. But the way she was looking at him made it clear that she had no qualms about putting all that on hold. He may have been an expert deal-maker, good at finding loopholes. Fox, however, was just as good at handling inconveniences. After all, she had kept her head down for years, but clearly she had been ready for whatever may come her way. And she had been prepared for the cost to her kindly countenance.

As she held the dagger aloft, she eyed the way the light glinted off of it. Something rose up through her chest; a stray spike of anger. She understood how he could tie himself to the dagger for himself and the power it would give him. But how could he keep doing this to Belle? Before she could stop herself, she was speaking again. "You know," she began softly, "I just don't get it. Is all that power _really_ worth being tied to this thing?" Gold did not answer. He only swallowed, looking away from her again. "Is it worth losing your _family?"_ she pressed. "Over and over and over…" she twirled the dagger as she spoke.

"Enough." Gold's voice was soft. His eyes slid over the horizon, the dock, the beach; anywhere but the fairy before him.

"So that's a no?" She raised her eyebrows. He remained silent. Her head tilted to one side. "What did you do to these two, anyway?" She asked with curiosity, but not with the power of the dagger. She did, however, use it to gesture to Hyde where he remained on the ground. Gold gave her an icy stare for exactly five seconds before replying.

"I trapped them in the Land of Untold Stories," he said candidly. Without missing a beat, Fox nodded. Then she sighed.

"Here." She tossed the dagger to him. He caught it deftly, stooping a bit as he did so. Then he stared at her for a moment. "Oh, come on," she implored. "You think I wanna hang on to that? I can't just start calling you up whenever I need something done. I'll get lazy." She slipped her newly free hand into her jacket pocket, giving no indication she even remembered Hyde's presence behind her other than the hand that still held her wand. Nonetheless, he stayed down. Gold said nothing, still seemingly bewildered. "You should go check on your ex-wife. I'm sure she'll be _thrilled_ to see you." Something grim crept into Fox's already sarcastic tone, but despite the foreboding Gold could not help but feel, he also could not agree more.

For a moment, Gold felt the insane need to thank the fairy before him. That, however, might have been a bit much for one day. Instead he tucked the dagger into his coat, squared his shoulders, nodded to Fox, and turned to walk away. He moved slowly. Fox was right; he did need to talk to Belle. He did not, however, need to suffer through the snark that would, no doubt, come in spades from Hook.

Only once Gold was a good distance away from her and Hyde did Fox turn from the spot where he had been stood moments before. As if in denial of what she was doing, she still did not look at Hyde. Hands still in her pockets, she pivoted on her spot and began the walk back into town. There was, of course, a faster way, but she found she still was not sure exactly where she was going.

"Come on," she intoned, the only acknowledgement she had given so far of Hyde's presence. When the scarred man spoke, it was in a rather winded voice. If she did not know any better, Fox would have thought he was in shock.

"I don't think–"

"No, I don't think you do," she said apathetically. Still refusing to spare him a glance, she continued on walking. Hyde scrambled up and, this time, followed her. He limped a bit, but did not say a word, doing his best to keep up and keep behind.

Hyde did not have to wonder why Fox was so cold with him. He had, after all, just tried to kill someone, if indirectly. Wisely, however, he did not ask. In spite of the time he had spent looking over maps in the mayor's office, he did not have quite the familiarity with the town that he would have needed to know where they were going. As it was, he kept his head down, still trying to regain his breath and wondering why the fairy leading him had saved him, and why she had not immediately locked him away.

For her part, Fox was wondering something similar. Why had she not made Gold lock Hyde away as well? He deserved it and worse. Even walking through Storybrooke – and thanking her lucky stars that anyone who may have noticed them seemed otherwise occupied – some part of her brain was screaming at her to turn around. To keep her eyes on him just in case he tried to harm her. She doubted he would try to run, he was still limping, but she held her wand between tension-yellow fingers anyway. He did not speak while she tried to puzzle out what exactly she should do with him.

Now that he was free of Jekyll, she had no idea just how dangerous he might or might not be. He had once told her that Jekyll had done something that could not be undone, but how much of that had actually been Jekyll? She knew about Mary and what had happened to her, but could it be that Hyde simply wanted somebody to blame for her death? Until just a week earlier, he and Jekyll had been the same entity, if not exactly the same person. They fed into one another in every way. The more she thought about it, the more she kicked herself for not seeing Jekyll's attack on Belle – or anyone else it may have been – coming. Wary as she had been of him, she had been far more worried about what Hyde might do in Storybrooke. Now she saw that they were each just as much of a threat as the other. But none of this brought her any closer to solving the problem of Mr. Hyde. Where to put him?

 _The best way to keep him safe is to keep him with me,_ Fox reasoned to herself. Keeping him in the back room of her shop might disrupt her business, but it was probably the safest option. It had no windows and one door she could seal off easily enough. There was no way Gold could get to him in there, with the protection spell she had set in place earlier that day and the one she would put up if Hyde were there. However, there was something about leaving him in the little room that simply felt wrong to her. Locking him in a case like an expensive pair of earrings was simply too cruel, even for him. He could not be anywhere near Jekyll and she had an idea of where Emma would want to put him. Since Gold knew where he was and what he had tried to do to Belle, the asylum was only a temporary solution. Fox did not have anything like the cage Hyde had kept her in, and though from what Belle had told her she knew that Zelena did, Fox doubted the witch would be willing to help. She had to credit her; Zelena knew when not to get involved. _Just like I_ used _to._ She subtly eyed Hyde. There was one other place he could go, but it was risky. It would take some extra time and some extra magic. It would also be the safest option for everyone, next to keeping him in her shop.

When they reached the parking lot of the building, Fox waved her hand impatiently before herself. Both she and Hyde disappeared in a glittering cloud of thick pink smoke. The moment the fairy landed them, Hyde finally spoke up.

"What did you just do? Where are we?" he asked sharply, voice more fervent than she had ever heard it. Rather than reply immediately, however, Fox waved her wand at him. Between the stress of her weekend and the events of the morning, she was frankly exhausted. The last thing she needed was the imposing dark side of a crazy doctor attempting to intimidate her in her own home.

A long, thick rope materialized in a warm glow, surrounding him. Hyde struggled, lashing out with his arms, but it was no use. The bindings were on him and before long, the rope was coiled all around him. There was not a single knot anywhere, and there did not need to be. Even with all of his strength, Hyde was no match for magic. Only when he was safely confined on her couch did Fox turn around. Rationally, she knew he was no longer a threat, but she still kept her coffee table in between them. Hyde glared up at her, but she remained calm.

"This is my apartment. Gold can't get to you here." Valiantly as he tried to keep the shock from his face, she could still see him do a double take. His eyebrows shot up and some of the fire left his eyes. The angry lines around his nose disappeared as his mouth fell open just enough that Fox let herself feel just a little smug. "I'm gonna go set up…your room." With that, she turned away. Had he been any less stunned, she was sure Hyde would have protested. As it was – whether it was the shock of any kindness from her or the trauma of nearly dying – he was silent, though she did hear some rustling behind her. Try as he may to escape the confines of the rope, she felt confident that he would fail. So, Fox strode down the hall off of her living room, passing the bathroom on her left and turning when she reached the end so that her back was to her bedroom door.

If she had continued through the living room, she would have walked into her small kitchen. She, like many Storybrooke residents, hardly ever used her kitchen. She had never been much of a cook, and never much cared to learn. It was not that she was incapable, if she put in the effort she would most likely succeed. Given her barren social calendar, she certainly had enough time. Fox simply did not have the desire. She had plenty of snack food, her refrigerator was never empty, nor was her pantry, but as nervous as Granny's made her, the grocery store was worse. So, most nights, Fox would call Granny and place an order for takeout. She could walk in, pick up her food, and be out the door in under ten minutes. Minimal social interaction. Truly, it was not that Fox did not like people. Quite the opposite. As a fairy godmother, she had bestowed plenty of gifts – blessings – on plenty of infants. She had congratulated plenty of parents, presented children to plenty of crowds. Generally, she had found that if a person was comfortable with small children, they could entertain an audience easily enough.

More than that, Fox liked to help people. In Storybrooke, however, she had wanted that to be unnecessary. So badly had she wanted the heroes to solve every one of their own problems, because if there was one thing she had been more afraid of than her own story playing out, it was getting in the way of a stray arrow. Now, faced with so much more than another villain of the week, all she wanted was to turn around and curl up, buried in her soft cream-colored sheets, and forget about the darkness sitting on her couch. But she was involved now. She had promised the Savior that she would handle this. With that in mind, she raised her wand and did just that.

The first thing that she saw move was the wreath hanging on the closet door she was facing. It mirrored the one on her front door, changing its foliage to fit the season. Fox watched as it flew back through the air before there was even air for it to fly through and land on the new closet door – still in front of her, but now to her right. Once it was in place, a warm rectangular glow shone on the wall across from it, to her left. The light pulsated once, twice, three times before fading away as rapidly as it had appeared. In its place now stood a white door with a small amount of wood grain artfully showing through the paint, just like every other door in her apartment. The hallway ended just beyond it. Moments after the new door appeared, it swung open a few inches. She imagined that to any onlookers, it might appear creepy. To her, it was reassuring, knowing that there was something beyond it.

When Fox stepped through the door, she found herself in a room with grey walls and wood-looking laminate floors that blended with the hallway outside. There were two windows, but unlike the large ones in the rest of her apartment, they were set up high in the walls and only half a foot tall. The bed, which had no footboard and a simple paneled rectangular headboard, was centered on the wall beneath them. To the left of it was an off-white heat register. The furniture was a darker wood than could be found anywhere else in her place. It was exceptionally plain overall.

There was another door in the corner, and through that an equally plain bathroom with a stand-up shower, a virtually empty medicine cabinet, and no windows. She took her time walking through, ensuring that she did not miss anything potentially dangerous. In all her years of magic, the fairy had never done an expansion spell so involved, and she could not afford to make any mistakes with this one. This room needed to keep Mr. Hyde contained. Had she been on friendlier terms with the Dark One, Fox would have asked what kind of magic he had used to trap Hyde and his…well, his _other_ half in the Land of Untold Stories. Doing that, however, would have implied the hands-on approach she was taking with Hyde. That was simply too much of a risk.

So, Fox perused the titles on the bookshelf – classics, mostly – and sifted through the contents of every drawer in his dresser. She rifled up and down in the linen closet and looked under the bed and made sure that every lightbulb was in proper working order. Then she remembered that she would likely have to explain to him what a lightbulb was, and with another wave of her wand, conjured a short list of instructions explaining how every electronic device worked. Now she simply had to hope he could not find a way to fashion them into some sort of weapon. But then, if she put a strong enough protection spell on his door and never went inside the room, it would hardly matter anyway. Hopefully.

When she came back into the living room, she found Hyde sitting rigidly in his bindings. His posture likely had nothing to do with the rope holding him, and she noticed that he was looking paler than she remembered. He needed to rest. So did she. She waved her hand lightly in his direction to loosen the rope around his legs, leaving it tightened around his arms.

"On your feet." Her tone was not entirely unkind, but he still gave her a brooding look when he obliged. Without the use of his hands, it was difficult to pull himself off of the cushions he had sunken into, but he managed and before long he was back to towering over her. The shadow underneath his sharp jaw was one that Fox had seen many times before. This time, however, it seemed different. This time, she was no longer afraid. Uneasy, to be sure, but now she was in her home. In her hand she held possibly the most powerful wand in Storybrooke. Hyde owed her his life. This was certainly not the Land of Untold Stories. "Follow me."

Hyde limped after her as she led him down the same short hallway she had just come from. Whether because of the rope or by his own intention, he kept a comfortable distance between them and did not say a word. The door to the room she had just created was still open and she gestured him through it, always remaining in front, not allowing him to pass by her. He was safely inside before he spoke, still bound by the rope.

"For me?" If sarcasm came in cough drop form, Fox imagined he would never be found without them. She ignored it.

"Until Emma figures out what to do with you, yes." There was no reason for her tone to be as forceful as it was. She knew she could not hurt him with her words, knew he did not care enough for that. Still, she found she could not help trying. Immature as it was, what was there to stop her? Hyde nodded once, slowly. "Until then…" She put one hand on the door and moved to close it.

"Why did you save me?" Hyde asked suddenly. She paused, leaning away from the door. How to respond when she did not know the answer herself?

"Why did you stop the Evil Queen from 'clipping my wings?'" The air quotes were evident in her voice. He raised his eyebrows, blanching in apparent surprise. He appeared not to have a response to that, so Fox flicked her wand one last time and the door slammed shut in front of her. On the other side of it, Hyde's bindings disappeared in a puff of pink smoke.

Fox wandered back into her living room and slowed to an absentminded stop. She swayed in her place beside the coffee table, moving side to side. In theory, she should go back to work. She had not officially opened that morning. Even with all the excitement of the day so far, she imagined that someone in Storybrooke would wonder why she had not. There was always somebody who needed a ring resized or a necklace for their childhood friend's birthday. And now with all of Storybrooke's new residents from the Land of Untold Stories, offsetting those who had left when Gold had stolen magic from the town, she was likely to get quite a bit of new business. Still, she could not force her legs to carry her out of the door, or anywhere else.

She could sit on her couch and rethink her life. Or at the very least, she could read the book on her coffee table. However, her couch was somehow less inviting than it had been on Friday night, and _The Count of Monte Cristo_ seemed a more daunting read. Who even wrote books that thick? Why had she bought it? She was becoming increasingly convinced that every story ever told had some truth to it.

Just as she reached up to pull the zipper of her black jacket free, her phone rang. Fox flinched, took a deep breath, and reached into her pocket. It took only a brief moment for her to pull out her phone and answer it.

"Hello?"

"Fox! Where are you? Is everything okay?" Emma. She had forgotten she told the Savior she would text her.

"I'm at my place, everything's fine. But listen, Jekyll attacked Belle."

" _What?"_ the Savior inquired. She heard Fox take a quick breath before explaining.

"You can't have light without the dark, Emma. Even when they're separated, they find a way to come together again." Beside Emma, Regina was looking at Gold. She faintly heard him say something about killing doppelgängers. All of them were squinting in the afternoon sun and Regina's crossed arms were the only indication she gave that the chill of the wind coming off of the water was affecting her. Emma tugged the sleeve of her tan leather jacket down with her free hand.

"So, what, Jekyll and Hyde were both the evil one?" She glanced over at Regina. The mayor looked at her over Gold's shoulder just as he started to walk away.

"Remains to be seen, but I wouldn't bet against it. I may or may not have saved them both. Hyde's here with me-just don't tell Gold that."

"What do you mean he's–"

"Sequestered in his own wing, unable to escape. Don't worry about him, he's my problem now." Emma's eyebrows shot into a hard frown. She could hear the incredulity in her own voice when she spoke again.

"The guy came to Storybrooke and tried to take over a couple days ago. He killed the Count of Monte Cristo's girlfriend and let him try and kill my parents within his first forty-eight hours here. That kinda makes him everyone's problem." Just an hour earlier, Fox had shrunk from the demanding in her tone, so she was surprised to hear her respond the way that she did.

"He won't be able to hurt anyone else." There was something in her confidence that Emma could not place, but it sounded oddly threatening. Like Fox was angry at someone. She knew fairies worked for the common good, but why would Fox take such interest in Hyde's case? Could it have something to do with Belle? Looking out onto the lower dock beside the Jolly Roger, she saw Gold stepping up to his ex-wife, almost cautiously. She could not blame him – Belle looked angrier than she had ever seen her. The librarian seemed to be clamping down on her affect. "Jekyll should be at the asylum, can you find someplace to move him to? Gold knows and I'd hate for the good doctor to meet his untimely demise before we can figure out what to do with him long-term."

"Yeah, sure," Emma conceded. "What are you gonna do?" She heard Fox sigh quietly, most probably through her nose. It sounded like she was facing away from the phone speaker.

"Well, I'm not gonna let either of them out," she muttered. Emma grimaced. "I don't know, Emma, I just…didn't know how to let him die. And the safest place for him to be is probably here, where I can stop him if he tries anything and protect him if Gold does." Emma hesitated.

A large part of her wanted to argue, to say that Hyde should be in the asylum or the sheriff's station or somewhere she could seehim and know that he was no danger to anyone anymore. But then she remembered what Archie had told her during their last session only the night before. _It's okay to let go of some of that control._ That was something she had never been much good at. From the moment she had gained even a modicum of control over her own life, regardless of what she was using it for – namely stealing from convenience stores and hoping she would not get pulled over in her unregistered car – she had been entirely unwilling to give it up. She knew that Killian had felt it, he had refused to ask her to move in, even after months of championing their love and their relationship.

"Emma, is everything okay?" came Regina's voice. Steel gravel. Emma sucked in a breath before replying, both to her and to Fox.

"Yeah." Then, more to the fairy, "I'll take care of it."

"Thank you. We should talk soon, just drop by the shop." Emma hung up.

"That was Fox," she told Regina, still squinting down at her phone. Even with her screen's brightness all the way up, it still seemed too dim for the day. "The fairy who owns that jewelry shop Henry likes," she elaborated.

"Yes, we've met. She came to help take names on Friday. What does she have to do with this?"

"Well, apparently she knows Hyde. And Jekyll. She saved Jekyll's life." Emma gestured loosely to the ship before slipping her phone into her pocket. Regina looked down.

"Yeah, about that…" She hesitated for a long moment. Emma inclined her head to see her face better.

"Regina? You okay?" Regina blinked once, twice, then looked resolutely back up at the blonde.

"I have to die."

 _Wait._

"What?" She had said it so casually, Emma must have heard her wrong. But Regina repeated herself.

"To stop the Evil Queen, I have to die. That's how it works," she said.

"What exactly did Gold tell you?"

"He said that Jekyll was stabbed, and just before Fox saved him, Hyde was dying too." Emma lifted her head and immediately regretted it, closing her eyes for a few seconds. "That's not the only bad news I got today." After blinking a few times, Emma looked at Regina again. There was something wry in her demeanor now, like she was thinking about how this _would_ happen to her. "We all thought Jekyll was the good one." But even though he separated himself from the darkness–"

"The darkness grew back," Emma finished for her. "That's what Fox said." Regina looked absolutely miserable by this point.

"So you know that even though the Evil Queen is gone now, she can always come back." But Emma shook her head.

"You're stronger than Jekyll." She almost sounded like she was reasoning with her, with the both of them. It was true, though. Between using good magic against Zelena and helping the townspeople, even when Henry was not looking, Emma had seen how far she had come.

"Maybe," she conceded. "But if I'm not…" Another brief hesitation. Then Regina said what, it seemed, she really wanted to say. "Back in Camelot, when you were the Dark One, you said you trusted me to do what it took to keep your family safe. I need you to promise me you'll do the same for me, if it comes to that." Emma replied before she even knew she had a reply.

"I won't let it come to that." Regina gazed at Emma for a long moment, and Emma – who had only ever seen Regina's heart once, in passing – could swear she could see it again. It was in her eyes, begging her to do what Saviors do, to keep everyone safe. Narrowed as they were, they were shining with something that looked not quite like tears.

"…promise." But no matter how openly Regina showed her heart, no matter how she begged, no matter how Emma thought of her absence in the visions that plagued her, there was only one thing she could say.

"I promise you, if it comes to that, we will find another way." The brunette seemed unsatisfied by this answer, but somehow reassured that Emma would not give up. So she nodded, and watched Emma nod back. Then she glanced over at Belle and Gold.

"What could they be talking about?" Emma followed her gaze. Belle looked…livid.

"Nothing good."

In her apartment, Fox had been eyeing her copy of _The Count of Monte Cristo_ since she had gotten off of the phone with Emma. Quite suddenly, she heard a groaning drawl echo down the hall.

"You know," came Hyde's voice, "you might want to let me out of here." She said nothing, slipping her phone back into her purse and walking to her door to hang it on the hook beside the one on which her spare shop keys resided. "All of those stories I brought to this town will play themselves out and when they do, you'll need someone who knows how to keep things from getting out of hand." The more closely she listened, the more punch-drunk Hyde sounded. She thought of telling him to rest as she slipped off her jacket, but in the time it took for her to kick off one shoe, she decided against it. Best not to engage. "Fauna…" he called in what was likely meant to be a warning tone. It did make her nervous, but it also annoyed her. Fox walked back through her living room, swiping the thick book from her light wooden coffee table as she did, and moving to her coat closet. Then she opened the closet door and threw the book inside, paying no mind to where it landed.

"Nobody calls me that anymore," she called back flatly. With that, she pushed the closet door shut.

* * *

 **So yeah, very much a metaphor for her closing Chapter Safe of her life in Storybrooke. I'm a sucker for a good metaphor.**


	8. Chapter 8

**I don't have much to say about this one. It took a while to write it, but it pretty much wrote itself. It's also definitely a long one, but honestly I'm not mad at it.**

* * *

Archie was accustomed to a number of the sounds that the door to his office had been used to make. He had heard the loud pounding from Grumpy's clenched fist and the tight rapping of the mayor's knuckles. David's sure, steady knocking could been easily recognized by the psychiatrist and he was sure he would immediately know Mr. Gold's muted knock should he ever hear it again. Emma's announcement of herself, usually not even bothered to request entry, was certainly memorable. But when a quiet tapping came during his lunch hour on a breezy Wednesday afternoon, Archie found he was stumped. This sound was timid, hesitant, and he was unsure if there were any Storybrooke residents who even fit that description anymore.

It could have been a refugee from the Land of Untold Stories, he supposed. But then, most of them were frightened of doctors, especially those of a psychological variety. Just the night before, a conversation between himself and a tight-lipped little man in a sailor's suit had attracted a small crowd at Granny's. The psychiatrist had been trying to explain that mental healthcare was not to be feared in this realm – at least, not in the twenty-first century – and that the 'asylum' under the hospital was more like a prison than a healthcare institution. A more permanent place for Storybrooke's criminals than the sheriff's station. Archie's heart went out to all those people who had arrived terrified and mistrusting, but he thought he had managed to convince a few of them that he could be trusted.

When he opened the door, however, it was not a refugee who stood on the other side. It was Belle.

"Belle," he greeted, eyes wide with surprise but still pleasant. She gave him a smile that fell just short of her usual warmth. The librarian seemed somehow smaller than normal, or maybe paler.

"Hey, Archie. Sorry, to just drop by like this. I was gonna call, but then I was already just across the street at Granny's," she loosely pointed in the general direction of Main Street, "so I figured if you weren't already with a client–"

"Please, come in." Archie normally tried to avoid cutting people off, but now he made an exception, gesturing for her to step inside his office. He stood to one side as she smiled again and obliged. Belle moved forward a few steps before stopping beside the sofa meant for Archie's patients and he gently shut his office door. "I'm sorry about the mess, I'm just trying to get organized in case…" The psychiatrist trailed off, stepping around Belle and leaning over the coffee table. He scooped up loose papers, jamming them into random files. He ambled over to his desk, scatterbrained as ever, and quickly wrapped what little sandwich he had left in crinkled saran wrap.

"In case anyone from the Land of Untold Stories needs your help," she finished for him. He glanced up to give her a self-conscious smile. It was at that moment, just before he returned his eyes to his desk, that he noticed what was off about Belle. She looked exhausted. The librarian had never been a particularly outgoing soul, even when things between her and Mr. Gold had been solid and happy. Hopeful. Belle had always been a quiet sort of strong. A force to be reckoned with, but no reckoning on her own. Now, standing in Archie's cozy office in her light blue dress and her oversized cardigan, he could see clearly how drawn the lines of her face had become. The circles underneath her eyes were bluer than ever before and the way her hand kept drifting between her stomach and the hem of her sleeve was more nervous than nurturing.

"Oh, please have a seat!" Archie gestured with a file before shoving it into a drawer. Belle sat down, still looking small and unsure.

For her part, she was not entirely sure why she had simply turned up outside of Archie's office that day. She knew that Killian would be around the ship less often now, but she still could not return to the apartment over the library. Though some of her things were still there, neither she nor the one-handed 'good kind of' pirate had been willing to stay for very long when she had gone to retrieve them just a week earlier. It was a decision she had recently come to be grateful she had made. Seeing the look in Rumple's eyes when he told her how he had imprisoned dozens of people in Mr. Hyde's asylum had made her nervous. When he told her how when his enemies had escaped Hyde's clutches, he had trapped both Hyde and Dr. Jekyll in the Land of Untold Stories, it only added to her anxiety. The cold detachment that no amount of sunlight could break through. That level of indifference was not foreign to her, but even with everything they had been through over the past few months, she had not seen it in years. Not since she had first come to his castle.

Perhaps it was that indifference that had caused him to give her such a cryptic warning. _By virtue of who he is, you must know this child will need protecting. You_ will _need me, it's only a matter of time._ To be fair, she had just finished telling him that he was little more than a self-loathing toxic substance. Not the words she had used, but she could only imagine that that was what he must have heard. In the moment, she had not cared, simply letting her newfound unease fuel her frustration. Looking back on it, perhaps she should have been more gentle. Then again, they had been married. They were going to have a child. Why should she not be completely honest with him? The whole situation had grown far too confusing for her to keep trying to puzzle it out on her own. She needed help.

"Again, I'm-I'm sorry to just drop in like this." Archie was not sure if Belle was repeating her earlier statement for his benefit or for her own.

"Oh no, it's no trouble at all," he reassured her, brushing away her concern as he straightened. Then he came to sit in the chair at the end of the coffee table, facing her. Storybrooke may have been created as a prison of sorts, but he had to hand it to the Dark Curse; this was an incredibly comfortable chair. "I heard about what happened with Jekyll on Killian's ship yesterday," he told her. Seeing her small, barely discernable flinch, Archie supposed someone with a better filter might not have mentioned that. Then again, it was his job to find the right buttons to push, and he doubted Belle was simply here for a friendly chat. Not sitting on his office's couch with what looked to be the weight of the sea on her shoulders.

"Did you?" she asked warily. He nodded.

"Side effect of living in a small town, I'm afraid." Belle took a deep breath and sighed.

"Yeah, I guess living in Rumple's castle for so long made me forget what that was like," she explained. Archie inclined his head and gazed at her with kind eyes, illuminated by the sunlight streaming through the half open blinds. After a moment of looking into them, Belle seemed to realize what she had just said. "Oh, I-I'm sorry." She gave breathless chuckle. "I didn't mean to say that."

"No, it's alright," Archie told her. Belle shook her head as if to clear it, eyes trailing down to the coffee table and he leaned forward, closer to her line of sight. "Really," he insisted, "it's okay." There was a short silence in which her eyes found him again. Then she nodded. "Frankly, I would've expected to see you in here sooner, considering everything that you've been through." Belle frowned, unsure of what he meant. "Your life has been a whirlwind since you came to Storybrooke, and the only real thing you've been able to-" he searched for the word he wanted, "to hang onto…" Archie hesitated for a moment, wondering how Belle would take the words he was about to say. But again, his job was to push the right buttons, so he pressed on. "…is the Dark One." He braced himself for the defense that usually came from Belle. In passing, he had seen her receive plenty of comments from the townspeople. People who simply could not understand what she saw in Gold.

Prior to officiating their wedding, he himself had been one of them. Belle had been the one to ask Archie to perform the ceremony. At first, he had almost wanted to say no. Back in the Enchanted Forest, the former cricket had caught himself thinking it would be best if the Charmings could find a way to kill the Dark One. That Rumplestiltskin was a monster and a menace and would never be anything more. Yet, here was this beautiful, intelligent, capable young woman who said she loved this beast – who wanted to _marry_ him – and for a moment he could swear he saw their future shining in her hopeful eyes. So Archie had agreed to marry them, and he had not regretted it.

Until the night that same beautiful, intelligent, capable young woman forced her new husband over the town line.

When he heard what had happened, Archie had been shocked. Knowing all of the horrible things he had done, Belle had married him anyway. Even thinking that Gold had changed, marriage was a big step to take with someone like the Dark One. Trapping the fairies in the sorcerer's hat had not been the first villainous thing Gold had done since arriving in Storybrooke, and if allowed to remain inside the town, he had sincerely doubted it would be the last. But forcing him over the town line, knowing what that would mean – that she would never see her _husband_ again – was an industrial-size decision. So he had offered Belle his psychotherapeutic services, and she had told him that she would be fine, and she had returned to her books.

Archie had been equally shocked when Belle returned to Gold. Being a couple took, at times, enormous effort from both parties under the best of circumstances. But Belle – hopeful, brave, overcompensating Belle – had gone back anyway. Not for the first time, Archie hoped she had made the right choice. That Gold would be a better man and that they could be happy together. Now, seeing her looking so small in his office with her blue dress and nodding in agreement, he wished he could go back to when she had asked him to officiate their wedding and tell her _no._

"What happened on that ship?" Archie asked, brow furrowed in curiosity. Belle swallowed and blinked a few times.

"Rumple cast a spell making it impossible for me to leave. He was trying to protect me from Mr. Hyde, but in the end," she took a deep breath in and chuckled at the irony, "I couldn't get away from Jekyll." Archie nodded in understanding. He was accustomed to the sounds his patients made as well. Laughter was rare, but always welcome. These breathy puffs of noise, however, were normally directed at the ceiling. And they were rarely happy. "I don't know what to do anymore," Belle continued. "I could always take care of myself when I was a child, but ever since I met Rumple I…" She sighed, and the psychiatrist could see how difficult this was for her. He remained silent. "I feel like all of my choices have been taken away from me. I had to either agree to go with him or let my people die. Stay in his dungeon or leave my true love. I was kidnapped by the Queen, I was locked in an asylum, I was given a new life with memories _filled_ with darkness and then, as soon as I remembered who I was and who I loved, he was gone again." Belle shook her head, remembering. "And then he died." She shook her head again, at the unfairness of it all. "And everything that's happened since then has been such a…"

"Whirlwind?" Archie supplied, using the same word he had used earlier. She nodded. He was surprised at the way that this conversation had unfolded. Normally, his patients had to warm up to revealing the deep, vulnerable reasons they had for seeking him out. Belle must have been keeping this buried for a long time.

"And I-I'm not sure if it's too late for us to fix things, but I don't know how to let him be a part of our child's life if he stays like this." It was not the first time she had had the thought, but it was the first time she had said it out loud. David had told her that having his father gone had been worse than having him at home, melancholy drunkenness and all, and she had heard him. Then again, she could be reasonably sure that David's father had not been a dark sorcerer who had hurt hundreds of people.

Archie was sitting in silence, watching her face. He could see her thinking, though he had no idea what was going on inside of her mind. He waited for her to speak again.

"We've both spent so long reacting to other people and to each other…" she thought for another moment, "…it's like we've both forgotten how to stop and think." Archie frowned in thought for a moment.

"Could that, at least partly, be why you put yourself under the sleeping curse? To give yourself a chance to think?" Belle tilted her head to one side and gave a frown of her own.

"I don't know…" she finally admitted, clearly still thinking about it.

"Well, that's definitely something we can talk about if you want," Archie offered. Almost absentmindedly, Belle nodded. There was the shortest of pauses before his curiosity got the better of him. "Your husband made a deal with Mr. Hyde for information on how to wake you up. Clearly, he was willing to go to some pretty great lengths," he noted. Belle wanted to scoff, to roll her eyes, to write a novella about all of the reasons why that deal should never have been necessary. But her issues with her father were a discussion unto itself, so she nodded. She could not argue with how far her (ex) husband would go to protect her, misguided as he often was. "I have to ask-how did he wake you?" From the emotions that passed, ever-so briefly, over her face, Archie could tell he had prodded exactly the right button. Belle swallowed before she answered.

* * *

Mr. Gold held the small black box tightly in both hands as he stepped through the portal. Letting it go the first time had been a mistake, and one that he would not make again. No matter how he told himself that he had grabbed the crystal to keep it from falling into the wrong hands, or that this had to be one of those things that simply happened for a reason, he could not seem to make himself believe it. When he arrived in the cloud realm, he kept the box in hand.

Upon arriving, Gold had expected sentries. Patrolmen that he would need to dispatch, or at the very least disarm. He expected that when he woke Belle (always _when,_ not if), she would not be pleased to find he had murdered presumably innocent guards for simply doing their job. But glancing around the hall in which he now found himself, there was no-one to be found. Looking up, he saw that the hall had no ceiling, and the patch of sky he could see was a light, pale blue with sparse, thin clouds. There were golden tapestries around him, fixed in place on the nearly matte silver walls. Most of them were abstract – intricately woven with seemingly no pattern to them. Only one of them had any discernible markings. An old, forgotten language to everyone, save himself. Gold paced over to a grey stone table, setting Pandora's Box down on the center but keeping one hand securely on the top of it. There was a stone pedestal just beside him, upon which sat a simple, silver urn. Out of practice though he was, he slowly deciphered the writing on the tapestry at the end of the hall where, he imagined, a throne would fit perfectly.

 _The slipper on the other foot, a journey taken, simply put._

 _To take the sand and wake thy love, what lies below must come above._

 _A simple question, nothing more will help thou reach beyond the door:_

 _To wake thy love and set them free, what are you willing now to see?_

Normally, Gold would have shrugged off the warning. Normally, he would have been unconcerned, certain that he and Belle could overcome anything to be together. Normally, he would not have felt this deep sense of foreboding creep into the pit of his stomach.

Still, he needed to focus. Knowing all that he knew about magic, he very much doubted that he would have another chance at waking Belle. So, he took a deep breath and waved a hand over the box. Gold was accustomed to the way that this magic worked – the swirl of color as his sleeping wife materialized before him. Next came the unfamiliar part. After he had placed the box on the floor, far enough from his foot that he felt confident he would not accidentally trap himself inside, he reached down into the urn beside him.

He was surprised to find that it was about three quarters of the way full. The sand inside seemed to be finer that the sand he would find on the beaches in Storybrooke, but it was not quite powdery and did not stick underneath his fingernails. He grasped a sizeable pinch of it and slowly, carefully, lifted it in the palm of his hand until it was just in front of his face. The sand was the same shimmering golden color as the thread woven through the tapestries on the walls. It was beautiful.

With all of the care in all the realms, Gold tossed it up into the air, letting it settle over both himself and Belle. He barely had time to lean forward against the table before his surroundings went dark. It was a strange sensation; like falling deep down into himself and falling away from himself at once. Some part of his consciousness seemed to be tumbling through the air until it found solid ground.

So this was what a sleeping curse was like.

Gold was surrounded by blackness. It was as if someone had coated his surroundings in squid ink. He was fully capable of moving, but refrained at the chance that coming in contact with any new surface would paralyze him. Yet, oddly, he could still clearly see his hands. Looking down, he saw that his feet were entirely visible. Where he stood was cold, but he could feel heat emanating from something to his left. The moment he turned towards the warmth, however, he felt his instincts pulling him in the other direction. In an instant – but not so quickly as to appear startled – he pivoted to face the other way. When he did, there stood a man.

The man's skin was as dark as a star-filled sky, his eyes standing out brightly in comparison. Rather than containing a true iris color, it seemed that the same shimmering sand that Gold had sprinkled himself and Belle with was twisting and flowing within the eyes that gazed upon him now. The man wore a pearly white robe with an almost silvery aura, and his hands were clasped easily in front of him.

"…who are you?" Gold asked him. His voice came out more harshly than he intended, but he supposed that may be a good thing. The man before him seemed unbothered.

"I suppose you would call me a _sandman."_ His hands, though he never moved them, were worn and callused, like a carpenter's would be. "But you can call me Jon." Gold did not respond, his expression remaining flat, eyes assessing. He was afraid that if he spoke, he would give away his desperation. He needed to find Belle. He needed to wake her up.

Almost as if he had heard the thoughts racing through Gold's head, the sandman nodded. A wry smile turned up the corner of his mouth.

"And you must be the Dark One who wants to wake Belle," he inferred.

"Where is she?" The sandman paid no mind to Gold's abrasive distrust of him. He gestured forward, indicating that Gold should turn back around. After a moment of hesitation, he did. Almost immediately, the sandman was at his side. With no words spoken between them, they were walking towards the warmth Gold could still feel.

"No doubt you have some experience with these curses. You know that waking her will be no simple task if she does not want to be awoken."

"Of course she does. She has to do what's best for our child now." The sandman beside him seemed to have something to say, but he remained silent. Gold expected their surroundings to grow warmer and warmer, and for the red flames he knew were awaiting them in this netherworld to light their way. Instead, the heat surrounding them remained steady – almost comforting. Their locale did light up, but with rich browns and dull golds, first blurring together, then gradually becoming more and more clear. Before he had even grasped what was happening, Gold recognized where they were. "My castle."

"Yes," the sandman confirmed. "I have created a dream world for your slumbering wife. Now, all you have to do is find her and wake her." Gold drifted away from him, looking all around. "Go quickly, you haven't much time."

"Meaning what?" Gold asked. But when he turned back to face the sandman, he was gone.

Normally, Gold would have liked to spend at least some time searching for the strange man. What had his warning meant, exactly? Just how much time did he have? When it came to Belle, however, he simply could not risk it. So he turned back to the great double doors before him, strode forward, and pushed them open. Belle was busying herself dusting his collection in her simple blue dress. She turned around when she heard him enter the room.

"Rumple," she greeted, frowning. "What are you doing here?" Not _what's going on?_ Not _have you come to wake me?_ Not even a _hello._ For some reason, that stung.

"I've come to wake you." If anything, her frown deepened. She stepped carefully down from the stepladder upon which she had been perched.

"Why? What's happened?" Her tone could only be described as suspicious. Of what, however, Gold had no idea. He looked down at himself. Same dark coat, same dark suit. Nothing about him was different. So why was Belle so confused? He looked at her with a frown of his own.

"Belle, you're under a–"

"A sleeping curse," she nodded. "I know. Haven't you brought me to my father?" Gold was unsure of how to respond to that. Despite his own issues with Maurice, he did not know how to tell the mother of his child that her father had gone to yet another extreme to keep them separated. "We're not still in the Underworld?" She seemed unwilling to come any closer to him, remaining on one end of the long table at the center of the hall while he remained on the other.

"No!" he was quick to reassure her. "I brought you to the hall of a sandman so I could wake you up." At this, she shook her head. Her frown lost some of its confusion, but now it seemed almost…saddened. His feet wanted to carry him to her, and one of them managed to shift forward, but at that moment they felt numb.

"Wake me up? Rumple, I don't know if you can." It was like all of the emotion of losing this woman time and time again had chosen that precise moment to come crashing over his head. Faster than he could control them, there were tears in his wide eyes. All of a sudden, his feet carried him all the way to her and Belle, being conscious that it was only a dream, allowed them to.

"Belle, please." He begged as he made his way there. "I-I know I've made mistakes–"

"Not mistakes, Rumple. You've made wrong choices." He looked like his heart was slowly being crushed.

"…yes." Belle chuckled as she gathered herself, but it came out more like a scoff.

"Look, I remember our first dance after we got married…okay? And I couldn't remember the last time I'd felt as safe as when I was in your arms – my heart was _all_ yours. But even then, you were lying to me. _All_ of this," she gestured between the two of them, shaking her head, "it's all been a lie." Belle looked at Rumple as though she was really seeing him for the first time. "If you were pure evil, if you were just 'the Dark One,'" the quotation was evident in her voice as her frown melted completely away, "then _maybe_ I could forgive you because that's all you could be. But you…" she shook her head again, "you _do_ feel love. And you _could_ be a good man, if you tried. If you want to be my true love again, be _worthy_ of it." Normally, the sight of Rumple with tears in his eyes would make Belle melt. But this time was different. This time, she knew she had to stay strong, regardless of what it meant for her. She would rather remain under this sleeping curse for years to come than continue enabling him to be the beast he was when they first met. His next words, however, almost broke her resolve.

"…what if I fail?" he whispered. Belle's brow furrowed, but she stayed strong.

"What if you don't _try?"_ She thought back to the last time she had asked that of him, in Zelena's cellar. He had failed then, but not for lack of effort. No matter how awful he could be, Rumple had always tried for her. She had to grant him that. "I love you, Rumple, I always will, but–"

"Then wake up." Before he could stop them, he found his hands were on her arms, barely grazing the skin of her elbows. She glanced down but did not protest, and he took that as a positive sign. "Just, try to go back. Remember," he pleaded. Gold touched his lips to Belle's forehead then, for just a moment. The second they made contact, the room around them shifted and he felt his dark heart surge. It was as if _he_ had been under the sleeping curse, waiting for her love to wake him.

Around them they could see her memories replaying. The moment they started falling when she had literally fallen into his arms. Him asking her why she came back after he set her free. Belle watched as she lay on her bed in the Queen's dungeon, asleep but calling out for him. And then they were in the woods as the first curse broke, then his shop when she came back the next morning, the day she _chose_ him. All those moments; extracting Pongo's memories, the day he told her who she was, even if she could not remember, the day she _did_ remember, him stepping off of Killian's ship with Henry and Bae, the day he came back to her after they defeated Zelena – the day he proposed. Even through all of the heartbreak she had suffered, Belle had loved Rumple. When his heart became overcome by all of his darkness, she had returned to him because she loved him. Knowing full well that it was too much – that there was too much hurt between them – she had stayed by his side during his coma, because she still loved him. And when she landed in the Underworld and found out he was the Dark One once again, she had felt her heart shatter. As she continued to work with him, she felt she was only twisting a knife further into her own chest. Belle had finally been forced to recognize that she had fully and with reckless abandon loved every single part of him, even the ones he could not see, and she knew exactly who he was. Who he could be if he just believed – just trusted _her._

Because Rumplestiltskin was her true love, and no dark magic nor broken promise would ever be capable of changing that most powerful magic of all.

For the first time, Belle found herself truly face to face with all of that love, all of those moments. But it did not crumble her as she thought it might. Her heart felt…full. It was that love that would give her their child. _Their child._

Belle's eyes sprung open. No longer was she caught in a sea of memory. She was in a great hall, with floors and columns of marble and walls of silver. Golden tapestries and banners hung all around, and she herself was sat upon a smooth stone table. Beside her, Gold stood leaning against the table, his eyes still shut.

"Rumple?" Belle called. But he did not respond. Because for all of the love Belle had seen, there was also pain. And now Gold was finally seeing it clearly.

He could pick out some of the moments, but many of them had faded from his own memory. Hearing her sob for her fate in his castle's dungeon night after night, only to see her lift her chin the following morning and talk back when no-one else would have dared. Ever the brave soul. The tears in her eyes when she first called him a coward and the hollowness of her footsteps as he sent her away. Belle had believed so thoroughly that he cared more for her than for his power. Now for the first time, he saw the night she stopped believing that through her eyes. The night she had forced him over the town line. It had been one of the worst nights of his many lifetimes, in some ways worse than losing Bae, because a part of him had seen it coming and begged him to stop before he lost this second chance. But seeing it through her eyes was worse.

He had betrayed their love, their marriage, her friends, and everything she believed in. And she had seen none of it. Standing before her, begging her to give him another chance as she held in her hand what she believed to be the thing he loved most, she saw the man she loved. But how many times would she allow love to make her a fool before she accepted the truth?

Only months later, days after she did give him that new chance, he only proved her right. He lied to her yet again, even as he had ushered her out of harm's way, fighting back his sobs. All he had were crocodile tears and empty promises. He had never changed. _He would never change._

"Rumple!" Suddenly, her voice reached him. Gold's eyes snapped open and he jerked upright. It took a moment for his eyes to find her again, but when they did, something was off. The relief he normally felt at her presence now froze. This was not good. Remorse, horror, _anything_ would have been better than this cold feeling of dread.

She was going to leave. There was no reason for her to stay.

"Belle–"

"Did you see him?" she pressed on over him. Her hand drifted absentmindedly to her stomach as Gold nodded.

In her dream, just before she had woken, a young child had appeared. He could not have been more than seven, but he was running, rounding the corner of her memories. The child had been holding out his hands, a frightened look on his round face as he cried out to them – to her.

" _No, wait!"_ There had been more power in those two words than any explanation he could have given them.

"Our child. Rumple, our _son."_ Gold put a hand out, almost reaching her arm before thinking better of it. He set his hand down on the table instead, almost touching her.

"That's not possible, Belle. It was just a dream, it couldn't have been our child," he tried to reassure her, but his voice gave him away. Gold was shaken by the boy's appearance too.

"No, but it was," Belle insisted, shaking her head. "He was trying to warn me. I don't think he wanted me to wake up…to you." Gold was stung, but he did not flinch. He only swallowed and looked up at the mother of his child. His former wife. The woman he had betrayed more times than he could count, even times he had not realized she had learned of until now.

"It's not what I love most," he blurted. Now he flinched. Belle looked at him again, coming out of her own thoughts.

"What?" she asked, expression filled with confusion.

"The dagger. When the gauntlet led you to it, you said it was the thing I loved most," he explained, his voice hushed. Belle shook her head, brow furrowed even more deeply.

"What does that have to do wi–?"

"That gauntlet leads one to the greatest _weakness_ of whomever one chooses. The dagger is my greatest weakness, it's the only thing that can kill me. But the thing I loved the most," he caught her eye again, something gentle in his, "was _you._ And now, it's you and our child." Belle's brow melted back into its normal position on her drawn, but ever beautiful face. She opened her mouth to speak, shaking her head slightly again, but Gold continued. "It was our shared true love for this child that caused you to awaken," he gestured to where her hand still rested on her stomach.

"Actually," came a voice from behind Gold, "that was me." Gold spun around, hand raised and ready to throw the ball of flames now sitting within it. Belle's hand darted up to still her ex-husband's when she saw who had spoken. He came out from behind a column, hands clasped before him, and though Belle could not remember ever seeing him before, she knew his face. She had seen those eyes, deep and swirling with gold.

"Sandman," Gold growled, dropping his hand and allowing the fire to fade away. Belle's hand lifted away from his arm.

"I told you," the man said amiably, "call me Jon." Gold simply stared at him, the hard edge never leaving his gaze. The sandman, Jon, never lost his pleasant demeanor, however, and he directed his soft smile over to Belle when she spoke.

"But why? I don't understand."

"Oh, it's a simple enough magic, removing someone from the realm of slumber." Gold scoffed in the back of his throat. Was this sandman showing off? Feigning humility to paint himself as a hero?

"Yes, but if you can wake people from sleeping curses, why not wake them all?" Jon shrugged, his broad, rounded shoulders rising and falling like a sand dune.

"The affairs of those who curse and are cursed are not my business."

"Then why wake Belle?" Gold ground out, still distrustful. Jon's curious eyes found the Dark One making sure to stand between Belle and himself. He raised his eyebrows.

"You came to my home." Belle frowned. Gold was confused but refused to show it. "Charged into the realm of slumber to break a curse and shared your memories with me in order to do it." At this, he glanced away from the two of them, over to the wall. "Come to think of it, some of those would make interesting dreams," he mused. Gold sighed in frustration, Belle cleared her throat, and Jon's gaze slowly found the Dark One again. "I believe you would call that a _deal?"_ Reluctantly, Gold nodded. After a moment's hesitation, Belle spoke up again.

"Thank you," she said. Jon nodded kindly to her. Then he spoke to Gold one last time.

"Do be careful not to lose them again."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Gold was losing his patience. There was no change in Jon's face – he still had that same strange smile. But instead of answering, he began to fade. It started at his head, his forehead shimmering with gold and disappearing, then spread to his neck, his shoulders, all the way down to his feet. It was a slow fade, but in no time at all, he was gone.

Belle had to call her ex-husband's name a few times before finally getting his attention. Both of them felt strange, as if they had just woken up from a sleep somehow deeper than any sleeping curse. But both knew that what had just happened was no dream.

" _Rumple."_ Once again, Gold's attention snapped back to Belle and he turned back around to face her. "What just happened? Do you know him?" Maybe it was simply the time she had spent with the Dark One that was causing her to be so suspicious, but Belle could not shake the feeling that there was more going on than what Jon had told them. That he had to have some other, more sinister motivation for waking her.

"It's nothing. Don't worry about it, Belle. You're awake now, and that's all that matters." With that, he pulled the sorcerer's wand out of an inner pocket. Holding his other hand out, palm up, he waved the wand lightly in the air. A small amulet on a leather cord appeared and he held it out to her.

"Here." She frowned questioningly first at it, then at him.

"What is it?" she inquired warily.

"Those who have been under a sleeping curse often find themselves in a sort of netherworld after awakening from it; in your dreams, you may find your way back. This will allow you to control it." Belle's frown lifted once more, but left behind a small crease between her eyes. She reached out and carefully took the necklace from her ex-husband's hand.

"Thank you," she said guardedly. He simply nodded. She could see pain in his eyes and on his tightly closed lips, but she made no comment on it as she draped the amulet around her neck and tucked it into her shirt.

"The rest, I imagine, we can discuss at home." Raising the wand once more, Gold stepped away from the table and waved it slowly in a swirling motion. White sparks trailed away from the wand tip and gradually, a doorway materialized before him, with a spinning vortex of white and midnight blue.

"I'll go, but…I can't make a home with you," Belle's voice came from beside him. He looked to her as she hopped down from the stone slab and moved toward the portal before stopping and turning to face him once more. "After everything we've been through, Rumple, everything you've _done–"_

"Belle, please." Gold's eyes were wide and his voice shook. He could hear the exhaustion in her voice – could see the pained resolve in her eyes.

"I have always loved you, but it was never enough for you, was it?" Gold shook his head and tried to speak again, but Belle pressed on. It was her turn now. Finally. "And now our son has given me a warning, and I'm going to do right by him," she insisted. "I hope you can do the same, Rumple…I really do."

And then she turned away.

And then she walked through the portal, back to Storybrooke.

Gold felt his leg weaken, like the magic had gotten away from it and followed her. He stumbled back a step, staring after her, watching the portal as it slowly closed. Gold reached out weakly behind himself, only just finding purchase on the stone table as he finally let his emotions take hold. He closed his eyes as the tears fell, just as he had all those years ago, only the first time of the times she had left.

 _Only the first of the times he had driven her away._

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 **In the Swedish tradition, the sandman is actually called Jon or John Blund. I'm not sure why, feel free to message me or send me an ask if you do!**


	9. Chapter 9

**Y'all, let me tell you, life has been crazy. Between the Sickness and the technical difficulties, I have genuinely been trying to get this chapter up, but it's been rough. Tbh, I wanted to make it longer, but a, I wanted to just post it already and b, I was afraid I'd end up making it too long. I think the longest chapter in this thing will end up being chapter 8, unless something crazy happens…*wink*, so I'm gonna try to be careful with these chapter lengths from here on out.**

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He had been getting close to finding them – he had to have been. Every morning he had dragged himself off of his cot or the pile of rags he had slept on the night before, had surrendered his wrist to his friend so that she could check his unpredictable pulse every afternoon. His heartbeat, it seemed, was always erratic these days. But Aladdin had felt himself getting closer and closer to the thing he sought.

It had only been two years since he had left the capitol of Agrabah, but it felt as though it had been two decades. Aladdin felt old, like the sand had worn lines into his face and slowed the gears that had once run his joints as smoothly as a flying carpet ride. He could not run as fast as he could just months before, or slip through crowds as easily. The worst part, though, was the ever-present tremors.

At the time he had done it, leaving those damn shears in the Cave of Wonders had seemed an excellent idea. He had no doubt Jafar could find them, but he had been so sure he would defeat the sorcerer before any more real damage could be done. And the cave was the perfect place for the shears. It was out of the way, difficult to find, and nearly impossible to steal from, unless one happened to be the best thief in the world. Or the Savior.

Thirteen months after leaving Agrabah's capitol, he had sent a message to Princess Jasmine to meet him there through a young palace servant. He had not wanted to be seen roaming the streets, afraid that Jafar would find him. When he told her this, she asked him why he would risk seeing her at all. He told her that it was because he needed help freeing a genie. The truth was that he needed to see her.

For three days he managed to fight off the tremors that had just begun shooting up his arms. He remembered what Jafar's oracle had shown him, remembered the feeling it had left him with. Just over a year later, it took a few paces and a stern mental pep talk to shake that feeling off. From what he had seen in the red bird's eyes, he knew it would only grow more and more difficult to do, so he had seized the first excuse that he could to see Jasmine again. Of course, she had seen straight through it, seen that it truly was an excuse and that he, the Savior, could surely free a genie on his own. But though she had told him off for distracting her from her _royal duties,_ she had not seemed to mind much. And they had succeeded in freeing the genie before Jafar could get to him. That was not the first time Aladdin had seen Jasmine since first leaving the capital, but it was the last.

It was not until she was safely back within the palace walls and Aladdin had made it to the Agrabahn Gulf that Jafar managed to find him. By the time he did, Aladdin had thrown the empty lamp into the sea and seen the genie off, wishing him the best in his endeavor to see the world. That was simply another in a long line of battles he had fought against Jafar. But when Aladdin came away from that fight, he had to ponder just how narrow his victory had been. Had Jasmine softened his heart? His will to defeat Jafar once and for all? Not likely. Jasmine was the person who had first told him that that was exactly what he needed to do. He considered everything from the possibility that Jafar's power was growing to the weather – both quickly dismissed ideas. The only thing left to ponder was the future the bird had shown him. And the tremors.

For the first few weeks after that fight, Aladdin felt guilty for putting his grand quest to save the world on hold. He still saved people, though not nearly as many as he had before. Agrabah was surviving, but only just. Jasmine and the Sultan were doing their best to help their people, but as long as Jafar was at large, their kingdom was vulnerable. There was only so much reasoning Aladdin could do with himself before he accepted that he was, in truth, ignoring his responsibilities. He had meant for it to be a quick trip to the Cave of Wonders to retrieve the shears. He would not use them until he absolutely had to, and then he could go and find the next Savior. Perhaps he and Jasmine could do that together, if her father did not need her. What could be a more important _royal duty_ than locating the Savior? But the moment he arrived at the cave, all thoughts of showing the princess the world fled from his mind.

The cave was empty.

Aladdin spent an entire day and night searching, until he finally fell from exhaustion, but there was nothing to be found but sand and rock. It could have been plunderers, but even if thieves had been able to find the cave, there was still the matter of getting inside. He knew from experience that that was not as easy as it seemed. Had Jafar emptied it, taking away any chance he had at surviving both in life and in riches? He would bet all the treasures that had been in the cave that that was what had happened, but it hardly mattered anymore. From that day, his focus became finding the shears. After all, how could he save Agrabah if he could not even save himself?

Once the first few weeks had come and gone, and months began passing by, Aladdin felt himself giving in to the truth. He was out to help himself now, saving the odd person along the way. A part of him still felt enormously guilty, and it was a voice that grew more and more difficult to ignore once he met Rahma. He stumbled into her village, dehydrated and shaky. Rahma was a short young woman with amber skin and dark hair. She would have been largely unremarkable, were it not for her kindness. She could not fight or run or steal, but she could bind his wounds and soothe his thoughts when he needed it. Her family had been part of a caravan, selling spices and small trinkets. When she was only fifteen, the caravan had been attacked by thieves far more vicious than Aladdin had ever been. Why she had trusted him, knowing how he made his living, he would never understand.

Another thing he quickly learned about Rahma was that she was sometimes exceptionally clever. Not in numbers or wisdom – in fact, she was fairly illiterate – but in scheming. He had not even realized that Jafar's red bird was following him until she presented it to him, caged and miserable. _Iago,_ she had called him, after a particularly ornery goat she had once met in a neighboring village. That was the only reason he had allowed her to remain by his side after she healed a head wound he had suffered, pushing a child out of the path of a horse in her village. Aladdin certainly did not invite her along on his journey because he needed her perspective, her strength, or her skills. Of course not.

So, Aladdin and Rahma traveled across desert and dry grassland, searching for a way to rid him of the title of the Savior. They brought Iago with them, in case Jafar tracked him to her village and put them in danger. They searched the far reaches of the continent, all the way back to the center. They followed each whisper they heard, investigated every rumor, visited collectors and dealers, monasteries and speakeasies, until there was only one possibility left: Jafar had them. He always had. And now that the Savior was no longer a threat to him, shaking and scared or otherwise powerless, Aladdin very much doubted he would ever get another chance to use them.

But just as he had finally given up all hope, Rahma heard something new. A man called Cyrus, all the way back in a village just beside the capital. When Rahma told him, she was surprised to find that Aladdin – in all the time he had spent in each of the villages surrounding the capital – had never heard of this Cyrus before. They were both suspicious, but what choice did they have when they were twice as desperate? With little more than a shrug and an _oh well,_ they were on their way back to the heart of Agrabah.

They only made it one day before Aladdin collapsed. He fell from the flying carpet and plummeted to the sand. With the last of his magic, he conjured a small house for them – a hut, really. The walls were strong and the roof was sturdy. There were rags inside that Rahma used to cover the door and the windows, but she had no help from him. In a word, Aladdin was useless. Even when his friend, the one person who had been by his side through everything that had happened over the past months, was hurt.

He should have expected Jafar to find him. When the sorcerer arrived, he was not surprised. What did surprise him, however, was how easy it was to do what he did next.

" _It took becoming a_ hero _for you to completely come apart. But that's what always happens to Saviors, isn't it?"_

Despite Rahma's best efforts, Aladdin had not been able to still his trembling hands for months. But with Jafar drawing closer, and with his singular focus on doing just that, he somehow managed it.

" _It's the fate of the Savior."_

Just a little closer…just a little farther forward…Aladdin's right hand darted out of his threadbare cloak. He withdrew it before Jafar ever noticed he had reached out at all.

" _You give and you give…and for what? They pick the fruit, they cut the branches, and all that's left is this shaking, useless stump."_

Jafar had watched him like a serpent, angling his head this way and that. Two years earlier, Aladdin would have been fighting to remain emotionless. Now he was too tired to try. Then, so quickly that he would never have seen it coming, Jafar lashed out with his staff, striking Aladdin in the knee. As he buckled, crying out, Aladdin had the thought that perhaps Jafar did notice what he had done. But the sorcerer only stood above him, brow placid as ever.

" _And he lived happily ever after."_

With that, he turned and strode out. Aladdin could faintly hear him flying away on the carpet, but it hardly mattered to him now. He raised his right hand, the shears in their leather sheath held tightly within his grasp.

What would Jasmine think when he disappeared for good?

* * *

There were plenty of things Henry had expected to hear on a perfectly lovely Saturday afternoon. It could have been that there was a rainstorm coming. Perhaps Fox had changed her mind about Mr. Hyde and needed help moving him to the asylum. Maybe Belle had found an apartment and wanted help moving in. But Emma calling him and Regina to tell them that Princess Jasmine of Agrabah had been found in the woods, running from the body of her fallen friend had not even been on the list of possibilities.

Yet, there he had stood in his grandparents' loft, watching the maroon fez hover in the air for a moment before falling resolutely back to the table, unable to locate its would-be owner. And there he had waited for one of his moms to walk through the door. And there he had stood when Archie came to force Emma to reveal her newest secret. Her visions, the tremors, her death.

For so long, he had been the hopeful one in the family. Even when Snow wavered, he always had faith that everything would turn out alright. And Henry always believed in Emma – when she was the Savior and not the Dark One. So it made sense that once all the shouting and the disbelief had died down, he needed a moment to breathe. And when he noticed that Jasmine had gone from the living space, not long after Regina had left, he realized that she probably needed that too. Since there was only one place in the small apartment that she could have gone, he ascended the stairs to find her in the loft.

The loft was set up like a guest bedroom, decorated in the same distressed white as the rest of the apartment. Things had been moved around since Emma had moved into her own house. Now, when Henry stayed here, he slept on the double bed, set just in front of the window. To one side there was a dresser and, in the corner, a full bookshelf. On the other side stood a desk with even more books set between two songbird bookends. Instead of the low cot against the wall, there were a few canvas storage baskets.

Jasmine, however, seemed to be taking none of this in. When Henry found her, she was perched on the end of the bed, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief and looking as though she was doing her very best not to disturb anything.

"Hey," Henry greeted softly. "So, you can look through some of the books in here, if you want." She looked up at him, reddened eyes darting between his face and the hutch opposite the bed. There were tear tracks running down her face and it occurred to him that that was probably an incredibly lame suggestion. "…or whatever helps." At that, her brows knit together and she sighed.

"I'm sorry to intrude," she apologized, almost sheepishly.

"Oh, no, it's-it's okay," Henry insisted. He sat beside her gently. "We're all going through this together." He paused for a moment, wondering if he should voice his next thought. He would not want her to think that he had given up hope, but at the same time she might want to hear it from somebody. "I'm sorry you haven't been able to find Aladdin." She looked down at her hands and nodded her thanks, sniffling quietly.

"If your mother's visions are right…if being the Savior is a death sentence–"

"I don't believe that," Henry interrupted. In truth, he hated to interrupt anyone, but Jasmine looked so hopeless. "Hyde's a villain, and villains lie. Aladdin is still alive somewhere, I know it." The smile she gave him then was one he recognized well. It was the one Emma had given him so many times during her first year in Storybrooke, back when she thought the curse was nonsense and his fairytale ramblings were simply a childhood phase. Over the years, though, he had learned to ignore it. To wait it out; he would eventually be proven right. He hoped.

"I hope so. For both of us," she told him. Then she looked back down at her hands. Henry frowned gently at her, trying to nonverbally coax her into saying whatever was on her mind. After a few moments, she took a long breath and spoke. "You know, a long time ago, in a cave in Agrabah…I was the one who put him on that path," Jasmine admitted quietly. "He became the Savior because I told him he had to." The crease between Henry's eyebrows deepened as he thought back to an autumn night years earlier.

"I did the same for my mom." Jasmine glanced over at him, head tilted to one side. "My Savior-mom," he clarified, eyes slipping past her to gaze at nothing. "Before I brought her here, she was just living her life." Jasmine frowned sympathetically, wondering silently if there was more to this kid than blind faith. She supposed he must have been through just as much in this town as the adults downstairs. His mother had been the Evil Queen, and Jasmine could only imagine what it must have been like for him to be caught between a mother and a monster. Somehow, Henry had come through that. How much else must he have gone through to become the boy sitting beside her now? Perhaps the hope he clung to had some merit.

"Rahma said that Aladdin and I would be reunited somehow," she told him suddenly. Henry's frown took on a more confused undertone and his eyes returned to her face.

"Who's Rahma? Was she the Oracle's guardian?" Jasmine gave a small, sad smile.

"She was. And perhaps your mother is right." Henry tilted his head to the side, and Jasmine's smile grew more sincere. "Your 'Savior-mom.'" The quotes were evident in her voice and Henry had to chuckle. She bumped him gently with her shoulder, the way David sometimes did. "If we can find Aladdin, perhaps he can help her," she suggested. Henry nodded.

"Maybe."

Downstairs, Snow was pulling a chair closer to the rocking chair by the window so she could face her daughter. David knew what his wife would say to her, and he elected to stay in the kitchen. There were, it seemed, always dishes to wash and Snow was the one who had a way with words. Emma also knew what was coming, and her face was angled towards the floor. She always dreaded these conversations with her parents, especially when she knew she was in the wrong. When she had known from the start that she would be in the wrong. While she was slowly getting better about lowering her defenses and apologizing, she knew that what she really should do was simply be honest from the start. And the fact was that this problem affected her family – maybe even the whole of Storybrooke – just as much as it did her. Her mom had told her back in Neverland that she had inherited her father's tunnel vision when it came to sharing her problems, but it had grown no easier since then.

"You should've been honest," Snow said gently.

"I didn't lie, I just didn't wanna worry you." Emma glanced around her mother to nod her chin at David. "Either of you. Not while there was a chance to find a way to fix this." She knew exactly what she was doing, could feel herself rationalizing. This never worked with Snow, but she had to try.

"But we help each other fix things," Snow shook her head. "Emma we're a _family."_ This gentleness, this logic was somehow worse than what the Savior had been expecting. Emma had expected frustration. She remembered the way her mom had reacted to David's failure to tell her that he had been poisoned with dreamshade just a couple years earlier. Snow had been dismissive, abrupt, evasive. Now she had her focus set on the heart of the issue, and the issue was that Emma – much as she had grown over the previous months – had been unwilling to share her burden with her family.

The vision she had been having was powerful. It was not like a daydream; something she could blink away. This vision was like a waking nightmare. She could not turn from the scene, she was inside it, experiencing it, and her tremors…

She had not been entirely dishonest with Killian. Her tremors were brought on by stress, but they symbolized far more than that. That night in the asylum, when Mr. Hyde had reached for her throat, her hand had only shaken for a moment before she was able to bring it back under control. If he had not been looking for the tremor that ran through it, Emma doubted he would even have noticed it. But if he were to pull that same move now, she was not sure how strong her reaction would be, or how easy it would be to control anymore. Especially not knowing exactly what kind of security measures Fox had in place, though the fairy had assured her over the phone that Hyde was not going anywhere.

Emma's tremors were growing worse by the day. She had caught herself shaking three times since they had found Rahma that morning, and it was not just external stress anymore. Emma was _afraid._ She was afraid of her future, of what it might bring. She was afraid of what it would mean if they could not find Aladdin, or worse, if they found him dead. She was not afraid of Hyde so much as of what it would mean for the town if he escaped. He had implied during their chat about Saviors dying that he would not be the villain who caused her story to 'end' (which had been strangely comforting). But most of all, she was afraid that she would not live to see her happy ending. Having worked so hard to give everyone else theirs – even before she had realized that that was what she was doing – and being so close to her own now, the idea of not being able to reach it felt like nothing short of a cruel joke.

"I guess I'm just…" Emma's feet twisted beneath her chair and her fingers twisted in her lap. "…scared." The second she admitted it, Snow's brow leapt to a concerned furrow and she sighed before reaching for her daughter's hands. She held them tightly and Emma swallowed before sheepishly asking, "Can you forgive me?" Snow faintly heard David's cell phone ring as she took a breath in to answer.

"Of course I forgive you," she assured Emma, "we're your parents. We'll always forgive you. But what about him?" She glanced back at Killian and Emma's gaze flickered guiltily towards him before returning to her mom. "You're trying to build something." Emma sighed and Snow rubbed her thumbs over the backs of her hands soothingly.

Emma did not need reminding that her relationship with Killian had her parents' relationship to live up to. _Snow White and Prince Charming_ set a very high standard and even after everything they had been through, even knowing for certain that their love was true, _Captain Hook and the Savior_ did not quite have the same ring to it. How many times had she pulled away from telling him the full truth? So often she had been determined to solve all of her problems on her own that she had failed to consider how not telling him about them would hurt him in the long run. Not telling him that she had turned him into a Dark One had been a mistake. Not telling him that everyone she had consulted seemed to think she was fated to die – and sooner than later – might somehow be worse.

At the moment Emma's thoughts started taking a turn for the bleak, David walked over. Snow noticed him first, automatically letting go of one of her daughter's hands to reach for one of his. He gave it to her without thinking, coming to a stop beside his wife. He waved his phone once as he spoke before pocketing it.

"That was Leroy. He had an appointment with Archie, but Archie didn't show." There was a small crease between his eyes, nearly worn in by a lifetime of troubling circumstances and intense concentration on sharp, swinging blades.

"Archie left with plenty of time," Emma observed. She tried not to think about the fact that this was normally the point when Killian would drift over to see what was troubling her. As it was, he was still brooding by the bar of her parents' kitchen.

"That wasn't Archie," gasped Snow, brows lifting in shock. Emma felt herself harden. The Savior, ready for battle. As ever.

"The Queen has him. Of _course_ she does," she said sardonically. By now, David had learned to ignore that tone, but Snow still gave her a look. Emma paid no mind to it, standing and lifting her red leather jacket from where it was draped across the back of her chair. She slid her arms through the sleeves, already moving to the door. "I'll be back."

"Wait, Emma, where are you going?" Charming asked, following her. His hand only slipped from Snow's for a second before she was up and beside him, grasping it once more. Neither of them really noticed.

"Swan?" Killian inquired, looking up from where his gaze had been doing its darndest to drill a hole in the floor. Henry came down the stairs from the loft, followed shortly by Jasmine.

"I'm going to find Archie."

"Emma…" Snow began.

"Mom, you have to go meet Regina," Henry interjected. Hesitantly, Emma stopped just before the apartment door, turning around to face her son.

"It can wait," Emma reasoned. "Aladdin's not gonna get any harder to find in one day. Who knows what could happen to Archie if we leave him with her any longer?" Jasmine's brow knit together immediately, and she took a breath in as if to speak, but her mouth seemed unable to form words. Catching the distress on her face, David spoke up.

"Alright, so Snow and I will go out and look for him. You can still go and find Aladdin." Emma looked at him, raising her hands in what fell just short of an appeal, jaw tightening in frustration.

"What are you gonna do if you find Archie? You guys don't have magic, the Queen could kill you."

"We can handle the Queen, we've been doing it for years," Snow defended.

"Go meet Regina, we'll take care of this," David insisted. Emma sighed, but nodded.

"Okay. Be careful." Both Charmings nodded back at their daughter just before she opened the door and stepped out of the apartment.

"Wait!" Jasmine called out to her. Emma stuck her head back through the door to acknowledge the princess as she moved closer. "I'll come with you. If there is a chance that Aladdin is here, I want to be there when you find him." The Savior nodded in agreement. Henry thought for a moment before stepping forward as well.

"I'll come too."

"You sure, kid? We don't know what's gonna happen," Emma cautioned. But Henry brushed it off.

"We still don't know what Hyde meant about those untold stories playing out. If this is one of them, don't you think the Author should know about it?" he reasoned. In spite of herself, Emma smiled warmly at him and nodded.

"You're right," she conceded, holding the door open wider for Henry and for Jasmine to step through. Before she could even begin to close it again, Killian finally moved from his position by the kitchen.

"So it's an expedition, then?" He spoke with only a shadow of his normal sanguine demeanor, but his movements were not entirely hollow. "Right. I'm in. Hate to miss anything." He gave Emma a brief but pointed look as he stepped past her onto the landing. She did not catch her parents sharing a look of concern.

"Right," she echoed, following him and finally closing the door behind her. Henry gave her a sympathetic look, which she returned with a half smile, but it faded quickly, and she followed the group down the stairs and out onto the street.

The walk to Regina's vault was tense and no number of reassuring smiles from Henry could make the silence any less frigid. Killian refused to so much as look at Emma. He seemed a bit too focused on sulking, squinting straight ahead, sunlight be damned. In truth, Emma would much rather simply _poof_ them all to the mausoleum, but with everyone as on edge as they were, she was afraid of what might happen if she tried to use her magic. Seeing that she was unable to might upset Killian more, though that was not her main concern. She had not seen what would happen if she made it halfway through some magical maneuver before it stopped working, and she wanted to be as far from her family as possible when she found out. Going after the Queen alone would have been one thing; the woman was a villain who took joy in tormenting her parents and had the audacity to wear Regina's face. Going after a fellow Savior surrounded by people who wanted nothing more than to see her succeed was another thing entirely. Emma had done everything alone for most of her life and though she loved her family more than anything, sometimes she missed the days when all she had to worry about was making sure her jacket did not get scratched too badly.

Now she was the Savior. Her mom was right; she could not keep any more secrets from them. Her dad, however, was wrong. There were still some things she would have to do alone. In her vision, she fought whoever was underneath the hood alone, regardless of who was standing by her. The truth was that she had a son and a pirate and a town full of people to carry and to protect. But the question remained: what would it cost her?

When she reached the vault, Emma went down alone – sheerly for the sake of limited space. It was most certainly not because she needed a break from Jasmine's nervous energy and Killian's brooding expression. That would have been absurd. Once she descended the steps, however, it became clear to her that Regina was just as nervous as the princess aboveground, if for a different reason.

"You took off kinda quickly," Emma observed, rounding the corner at the base of the stairs and shuffling into the room. She remembered the first time she had been down here, not so long ago as it felt. Back then, Henry had been in danger and his brunette mother had been unconscious on the floor. Now, she was very much awake and clearly flustered.

"Well, I'm sorry I'm trying to save your life," Regina bit back. Emma nodded her head to one side.

"Fair enough." She slowed to a halt, finding what seemed to be a safe distance from the frothing goblet Regina was fussing over. The mayor was rifling through jars and occasionally dropping things into the cup, the names of which the Savior was not sure she wanted to know.

"How's Henry?" Regina asked without looking up.

"Optimistic." Emma sighed. "It shouldn't surprise me anymore, but the kid's just so…" she searched for the right word.

"Full of hope," Regina supplied. Glancing up at her, Emma nodded. Then she looked back to the goblet. "So, what are we making in this cup of nightmares?"

"It's a kind of locator spell." The mayor shook a blue vial of something over the goblet as Emma frowned, crossing her arms. The cobalt coloring wavered like a liquid and for a moment, the bottom of the glass cleared, despite the vial's contents being small, solid spheres that looked remarkably like allspice.

"I thought everything Aladdin had was hot property." As usual, Regina raised an eyebrow at the slang, but this time she let it go quickly. This was the first opportunity Emma had had to take note of it since coming back from New York, but the Evil Queen-less Regina seemed far less judgmental than she had been before, despite being more tense.

"I did too, but then I realized there's one thing Aladdin had that he _didn't_ steal: his magic. This potion links like magic," she explained.

"The magic of two Saviors?" Regina nodded.

"All you have to do is drink."

"You can do that?" Emma's head dropped of its own accord, her features arranging themselves into an expression that made it clear that she was wondering if the mayor was serious. Regina scoffed lightly and raised one eyebrow, holding the frothing goblet out to the Savior.

"Let's go find Aladdin." There was something soothing in Regina's straightforward demeanor. This woman wasn't a thinker like Snow, or a talker like Arche. Regina got things done, just like Emma was inclined to do, and at that moment, that was exactly what the Savior needed. So she drank the potion. For her part, Regina had made it taste something like how a strawberry banana smoothie would taste if it had been freezer burned and then flash-thawed in a cremation chamber – in other words, not entirely awful – though Emma was unsure if that had been intentional. Briefly, she felt as though there were a battery buzzing away inside her stomach, but the sensation gave way quickly and she felt herself perk up.

"Let's," she agreed. Then she turned and led the way up the steps and out of the vault. Regina followed her, closing the door behind them and refreshing the protection spell around it.

Lately, it seemed, the Savior spent most of her time looking for people in the woods. Despite her knack for finding people and her sensitivity to magic, her sense of direction left something to be desired. More than once since returning to Storybrooke, she had found herself nearly colliding with the protection spell at the town line. This never seemed to happen when she was with her parents, but she supposed they must have their fair share of tracking experience. Though she would never admit it, Emma still sometimes dreamed of her brief time in the Enchanted Forest, when she traveled back in time with Killian. While her time there had been short and she had found a record number of mosquito bites all over herself the following morning, there had been something vaguely appealing about the realm. Still, when she felt a sensation like a hook in her chest pulling her towards the trees at the edge of the cemetery, she had to fight the urge to groan, for Jasmine's sake.

The trek through the woods was filled with nervous chatter, primarily from Jasmine and Regina – each tense for their own reason. Killian sulked as he walked just behind Emma, half listening to her as she tried to soothe both brunette women and lead the group. Still, he lent the odd word to the exchange. Henry alone seemed not to be in a chatty mood. Only Jasmine noticed, but she left him to his thoughts. She had an idea of what he must be thinking about.

Jasmine was wrong, however. Though he certainly hoped that they could find Aladdin, that he could help Emma, that was not Henry's largest concern. Actually, he was confused.

On the one hand, finding Aladdin would almost certainly help his mom find out how to stop whoever – or whatever – might be lurking under the hood in her visions. But on the other hand…something about the whole situation bothered him. It all simply felt _off;_ Mr. Hyde coming to Storybrooke with a young woman who could help Emma decipher the visions, only to tell her that she was fated to die? A young woman who just happened to be friends with the princess who was looking for the last Savior? A young woman who had just been killed?

And who had killed Rahma? His family all seemed to be assuming it was the Evil Queen, and she could not be ruled out. But the Queen normally liked to gloat about her dark deeds. As far as Henry could tell, she had yet to say a word about it to anyone who could reach the Charmings to relay it. Even disguised as Archie, she could have dropped some kind of hint.

In Henry's experience, circumstances as connected as these were never coincidence. But what was the pattern?


	10. Chapter 10

**Well, it's Monday where I live, so...**

 **Not gonna lie, a big part of why this chapter is so late is because it was just really hard for me to write.**

* * *

Henry had no time to figure out what the pattern was because, the moment he began to wonder at it, Emma stopped walking. She had been moving along at a quick but steady pace. For her to halt so abruptly, they had to be practically on top of Aladdin.

When Henry followed his mom's gaze, he saw what looked like a very old, run-down mausoleum. The kind of structure that was so decrepit on the outside that nobody in their right mind would bother to check the inside. Or else, nobody who was not a Savior who had swallowed a tracking potion.

Regina and Henry slowed to a stop, and the mayor's hand on Jasmine's arm helped her gently stumble to a halt. Killian's footsteps slowed as well, but he continued to draw nearer the decaying stone structure.

"He's in there, I can feel it," Emma posited, sounding as bewildered as Henry felt. Why would a Savior be squatting in a place like this? What would two Saviors be doing in Storybrooke? And what assurance had Rahma had that Aladdin would be in Storybrooke at all? Somehow, Henry had a difficult time believing anyone could have predicted that a Savior would find their way to a land with no magic, apart from within one small town that did not exist on any map.

"I'll go first then, shall I?" Killian suggested. "Make sure it's safe."

"What's it doing out here?" Regina asked, seemingly to none of them in particular. "What is _anything_ doing out here?" Emma glanced back, a furrow between her brows.

"You didn't know it was here?" she asked, having been under the impression that Regina knew every square inch of Storybrooke just as well as she knew her own office. The mayor spread her hands, her forehead creasing.

"No," she answered. "Maybe Hyde brought it somehow."

"In that really big hot air balloon of his," Emma suggested bemusedly. Regina scoffed in frustration but resisted the urge to snap at the blonde. Jasmine only stood between them in nervous silence, twisting her fingers. She all but leapt forward when Killian waved them towards the stone structure. Regina followed her immediately, but Emma found herself hanging back. She swayed a bit, arms folded with her hands tucked into her sides. Henry took a few steps of his own before he noticed she was not keeping pace with the others. When he did, he turned to look back at her. Emma had a small frown just above her nose, like she was thinking about something intently. Her eyes were cast downward.

"Mom?" Henry prompted. Upon hearing him speak, she perked up.

"Sorry," she said. Then she started toward the dilapidated stone hut.

"Are you okay?" Henry asked with a frown that closely resembled hers, allowing himself to fall behind her by a few steps.

"Yeah, I'm good. Let's just go find Aladdin." Emma's voice was sharper than she had intended for it to be. She told herself it was only so that Henry would hear her. Behind her, she heard him stepping brusquely to catch up, shaking off her words. The note in her voice that only he could hear clearly stated that she was not as prepared as she wanted everyone to believe. Young as Henry had been, he remembered Emma's behavior when she had first arrived in Storybrooke. She had insisted on charging into danger and doing everything she could do – and some things she could not – herself. That habit had not changed much over the past few years, though she was getting better. Henry, however, could not help but think that she would have preferred to be alone now. If she could not find Aladdin, or if she found him dead, that would not be a disappointment she would want anyone else to witness. Why she could not see that her family was there only to help her was beyond Henry. After everything they had been through, why could she not count on them for support?

Still oblivious to Henry's wonderings, Emma carefully descended the stone steps, just in front of him. It was a small space and the light filtered down the short staircase through the open door. The door itself was loose on its hinges and hung open on its own. Upon reaching the bottom of the steps, they saw Jasmine and Regina standing still, glancing around. Killian – who had recently discovered the flashlight on his cell phone – was shining it around warily, squinting through the dusty beam.

"He's here?" Jasmine asked. "Are you sure?" Emma nodded wordlessly, taking in her surroundings like she was afraid of what she would see.

"Positive." It was strange, though. The tightness in her chest was still there, like the cord connecting her to Aladdin was still tugging at her. Where else it could be leading, however, she had no idea. "What _is_ this place?" she mused. Regina shook her head in confusion, but Killian was quick to answer.

"It's a crypt."

Finally, Emma and Henry's eyes adjusted to the darkness, and they could see what the others were seeing. Dusty, decomposed corpses. They lay on stone shelves, and some of them had pieces of broken rock around them, like they had been walled off. Most of them were practically mummified. Vaguely, Henry noted that that meant the crypt could not have been in Storybrooke all this time. It must have come from some dryer land. Emma, however, was more focused on the cold feeling in her chest. It was spreading, numbing everything it touched.

Suddenly, she heard a sharp gasp from beside her.

"Jasmine?" she heard Regina ask. "What is it-what's wrong?" But the princess was not listening. Instead, she was stumbling away from the group, one hand covering her mouth. Her other hand was reaching out to one of the shelves. There was a corpse laying on it, and Emma could practically see the horrified expression it would be making if there had been skin stretched around its skull. She noticed a tear rolling down Jasmine's cheek as her fingers closed around something small and dull, fumbling as they lifted it away.

"Jasmine?" Emma asked. Killian crossed the small room purposefully, shining the light from his phone onto the object she had just lifted. Sitting in her palm was a sun- and sand-worn metal scarab. It may have been red, or purple at one time, and some flecks of blue remained. Underneath the layer of grime was likely gold. But the way that Jasmine was holding onto it made it seem the most important object in all the realms. She lifted the hand pressed over her mouth.

"This was Aladdin's." There were tears in her voice to match the ones on her face. "He _is_ in Storybrooke." Her voice broke on the last, and Regina stepped forward. The mayor placed a gentle hand on the princess's arm, but remained silent. She did not know what to say.

"Are you sure this is him?" Henry asked. But he was afraid he already knew the answer. Dread was blooming in his chest. Killian felt his heart grow cold.

"I gave this to him!" Jasmine cried. "It has to be him, I…" Suddenly, Regina found herself holding Jasmine upright. The light in the room wavered as Killian caught her other arm, being careful to keep his hook away from her.

Jasmine was growing very weary of crying.

"Okay," Regina finally said. "Come on, let's get some air." Had Snow been there, Regina knew the princess would have known what to say. What did the mayor know about comforting others? Silently, she cursed herself for being so damn clueless, but she wrapped an arm around Jasmine's waist and led the grieving woman back up the stone steps all the same. Killian let them go and stayed put, watching Henry make his way over to Emma. Only then did the pirate notice how quiet Emma had been through the whole exchange.

"Mom?" Emma gasped, apparently surprised at being addressed. "What does this mean?" Henry asked slowly.

"I don't know, I, uh…" She trailed off as if in thought, but Killian was not so sure that she was really thinking. Her eyes had glazed over and he could see some strange emotion attempting to fight its way through. Whatever it was, though, he did not get the chance to find out. "I think I need to be alone, for a bit." Killian felt his own eyes darken, but instead of pleading with him, Emma's own eyes turned as far from him as they could.

"As you wish, Swan," he grumbled, backing away. Always with her need for space. Always with sending him away.

Deep down, Killian knew perfectly well that Emma was not trying to hurt him. Some part of him knew that this was really not about him at all. Disturbing as the vision was, it was hers. It was her future that was at stake, and it sounded as though she might lose that future while fighting for him – for all of them. The trouble was, he had an immense desire to be a part of that future. Despite how often she had told him she wanted that too, he had had to exercise remarkable patience to get to this lukewarm place in their relationship. They had faced dangers and difficulties that he had felt certain they would never survive. And yet, they had. This, though, was something new. How could they fight something without knowing what it was? And how could he help if Emma would not ask him to?

Once outside the dank crypt, he turned and looked back at the entrance. No matter how hard he fought for this woman – no matter how hard they fought for each other – it seemed that there would always be one thing standing between them: themselves.

Glancing around, Killian found that Regina and Jasmine were nowhere to be seen. He did not imagine that the princess would find the presence of a one-handed pirate very reassuring, so he trudged off in the general direction of Main Street. Maybe he would get a table at the Rabbit Hole.

Who was he kidding? He was going to help Snow and Charming look for the cricket.

Down in the crypt, Henry had started towards the stairs, but he could not bring himself to climb them. His mom's back was turned to him, and he stared at it thoughtfully.

An Oracle's guardian who insisted that a Savior would be reunited with his princess, only to be killed just before they could find his body? A villain who threatened disastrous consequences of stories untold? A fairy who insisted that the villain be kept safe? There had to be a connection, but Henry could not fathom what it might be. Rahma and Jasmine had clearly been players, but what was Hyde's game? If Fox knew about it, she had not shared any details with Emma. He thought back to how the fairy had acted on the day of the new census, just the week before. Until that day, he had never seen her truly nervous, but finding out that Jekyll and Hyde were in Storybrooke had practically flicked a switch in her mind. She must have known something could go wrong. But why would she, a _fairy_ not warn him or Emma? Could it be that Fox was as clueless as the rest of the heroes?

Just as Henry's head was beginning to swim with all of his questions, Emma turned around to see him still standing at the foot of the stairs. She gasped, jumpier than usual.

"God, kid," she admonished, not entirely unkindly. "I told you, I really need to be alone."

Alone _._ Always alone.

"I know, but…" he grimaced and sighed through his nose. How to explain this? "It can't be a coincidence." In spite of herself. Emma frowned and stepped closer to her son.

"What d'you mean?" Henry's hands fidgeted within his pockets.

"An Oracle's guardian just _happens_ to be murdered the same day we find Aladdin…" he trailed off, eyes lingering on the remains on the shelf. The skull really did look terrified of something. Noticing where he was looking, his mom shifted so that she was blocking his view of the leathery corpse. "Aladdin was the one person who might be able to help you with a problem you didn't even know you had until Hyde told you about it. But he's the one who brought Rahma."

"Rahma?"

"The Oracle's guardian. And you heard Regina: Hyde must have brought this place here somehow."

"What are you saying?" But Emma had an idea of what he was saying. It was simply too complex for her to believe.

"What if Hyde is just messing with you? Your vision might not even be real," Henry suggested. Emma tilted her head and her frown took on a sympathetic edge. It looked remarkably like the expression Jasmine had given him earlier that day. He was so tired of that look. Both his moms had looked at him like that more times than he could count, and he had always been proven right in the end. This time could not be any different. He could not let this time be any different, not when there was so much at stake. And yet, he was not sure what more he could do. All the people who could have helped Emma – helped all of them – were either evil or gone.

"Kid…" Henry tried to argue, but he found he could not get the words out through his rapidly tightening throat.

"It…it can't be real-it…" He blinked once, twice, four times in a row. Emma sighed, all at once every bit the warm mother she had never thought she could be before Storybrooke. Before a knock on her door on an autumn night four years earlier. Stepping forward, she pulled her son into her arms.

"C'mere," she encouraged. Henry finally gave up, arms wrapping more tightly around her than they ever had before, shoulders shaking. It was like he was afraid she would disappear, and abruptly, Emma realized that he was.

It was like a tire boot. Ever since she had started having the vision, it was like the boot that normally kept her yellow bug firmly in Storybrooke with her family had been free floating. Now, she could feel it grounding her back to the pavement. For maybe the first time, she really understood what Elsa had meant about Anna's love keeping her magic steady. Emma had to love herself, had to trust herself first. But having someone to hang onto her more tightly than anyone else, who would go through whatever he needed to go through to keep her in his life…nothing could keep her more grounded than that.

"If you had…if you had never come to Storybrooke, n-none of this would be…would be happening," her son gasped out. He hiccupped – his tears must have been slowing. Emma could not see them. He had his face pressed into her neck, and he could feel the vibrations in her throat when she spoke.

"Operation Cobra part two," she said simply. Henry frowned.

"What?" Emma pulled back so that she could look at her son properly.

"Henry, you defied the _Evil Queen_ to keep me in Storybrooke when you were ten years old." He gave a shaky chuckle and she wiped away the tear tracks on his face with the back of her hand. "I think I can defy an Oracle's guardian or Mr. Hyde or _whoever_ is trying to take away my happy ending." Suddenly, Henry froze, small smile firmly in place until Emma registered his next words.

"Someone's there," he whispered. His lips barely moved, and he never took his eyes off of her face. His tone was admirably steady. This kid had clearly been through far too much for his age.

In one movement, Emma pushed him back and turned to keep him shielded behind her. Her right foot was planted firmly in front of her left and her hands were raised before her in a warning. With eyes well-adjusted to the darkness, she could make out the outline of a figure rounding the corner.

 _How big_ is _this place?_

This person was taller than Emma, with hair that fell to their shoulders. Even in the dark, she could tell that they were slouching, but they moved with determination. What she could not see was Henry squinting behind her, trying to get a clearer view of the oddly familiar stranger.

"Mom–"

"Stay back, I got this," she ordered. But just as the palms of her hands started glowing, she felt something.

The battery that had been buzzing away in her stomach shut down.

The blonde almost fell backwards into her son as she felt the cord that had pulled her to the crypt suddenly snap. The tightness in her chest that she had forgotten while comforting Henry disappeared, and she forced a deep, steady breath. She watched the stranger stumble back a step along with her. He, however, appeared unfazed.

"Not bad, Savior." There was something almost sardonic in the way he spoke Emma's title. Her hands lowered almost of their own accord. This newcomer's accent was strong, but she could understand him perfectly. Now that he had moved into the dusty light filtering down from the top of the stairs, she and Henry could see olive skin, dark hair, and unusually calculating eyes…

"Aladdin?" He did not answer Emma, rather sliding his gaze over to eye her son.

"Dry your eyes, kid." The endearment – if that was what it was – should have sounded strange from the newcomer's mouth, and to Emma, it did. Subtly, she moved to further separate the two of them. To Henry, though, it was as familiar as the glint of his dark eyes; the strange smile that seemed both to mock and to mollify. "Your mum's clearly got some fight left in her yet." Much like his smile, the stranger's tone was unreadable. Emma could not be sure if she was meant to be offended, or if she should be regardless. Under normal circumstances, she likely would have threatened him some more. However, she had an increasingly strong feeling that this…well, this street rat had once been a Savior.

"Lucky you were hiding in the dark, otherwise we might never have figured that out." The stranger chuckled softly.

"I know a cave in Agrabah with no shadows at all." There was an edge to his voice now. Was it sadness? Emma took a cautious step forward, fingers twitching ever-so slightly, and she adjusted her jacket to give them something to do. She was beginning to understand. "There's no flying carpets, but the weather's much better here."

Definitely Aladdin.

"You planted the scarab." The blonde did not need confirmation. Aladdin's eyes flickered downward. "You didn't want us to find you."

"I never meant for _anyone_ to find me. The sheriffs in town have been too busy saving the world since the curse broke to notice a common thief-I thought I'd stay hidden forever." He chuckled again, self-pity lining the humorless sound. And that edge in his voice was beginning to sound an awful lot like guilt to the sheriff in the crypt. She gave him a withering look. "A very good one, to their credit." He gave what was probably meant to be a small, respectful nod.

"So, you've been in Storybrooke this whole time?" Henry did not really need to ask; Aladdin's story practically told itself. "Ever since the first curse?" This time when Aladdin glanced up at him, Henry was certain he knew those eyes.

"I…" But Aladdin found he had to search for the words. Now both Emma and Henry could see the guilt in his voice edging into his eyes. "I've wanted to help, but without magic–"

"'Without magic'?" Emma echoed, folding her arms. "Aren't you the Desert Savior?" She stumbled through the words, but her point made it across the small room. "Isn't magic part of the job?" Now she just sounded cranky. A nonmagical Savior who refused to help the town and stole from its citizens? Four years ago, she would have arrested this guy and charged him with all kinds of misdemeanors. Even just one year ago, she would have arrested him for ruining what was supposed to be a relaxing Saturday afternoon.

As if listening to her thoughts, Aladdin held up his hands in surrender. His self-pity turned apologetic as he tried to find words that she would want to hear.

"Without magic, I'm just a street rat. Besides, you managed just fine on your own," he pointed out sheepishly. Then he reached a hand into an inner pocket of his tan jacket. "Here. I heard what your boy said about the visions." He nodded to Henry. The teenager shifted uncomfortably and cleared his throat, realizing that Aladdin must have heard his crying as well. If the 'Desert Savior' passed any judgement, however, he showed no sign of it. "They _are_ real, I'll tell you that. But this should help." The rise of his brow made it clear that he was speaking from experience, and his haunted tone let both the sheriff and her son know that his experience had been anything but pleasant.

When he held his hand out to Emma, he was holding a pair of golden shears, encased in a leather sheath.

"These belonged to the Fates," he explained. "They can sever your ties to your destiny." Any accusations lingering on the blonde's face melted away.

"Where did you get these?" she gasped. The corner of his mouth quirked up, but there was a bitter note in his voice when he answered her.

"On loan from an old enemy." She frowned again.

"You used them?"

"And as I'm sure Jasmine's told you, Agrabah fell." Something like shame made its weary way onto his face. "So, I ran to the Enchanted Forest. Got swept up in the curse." Aladdin swallowed thickly, not quite looking at Emma or Henry.

So that was it. A tracking potion, a trek through the woods, an upset Regina, and that was all it had come to. Emma had wanted so badly for the former Savior to give her an out. A way to avoid what it was becoming clear would be her fate. Now it seemed he had, but taking away her magic? Repeating the mistake she had almost made back in the sorcerer's mansion, before Elsa had stopped her, struck her as counterproductive. More than that, it struck her as _wrong._ Perhaps it was because if she had given up her power back then, she would probably be trapped in a hat, though she suspected there was another reason.

In Rumplestiltskin's vault, she had told Killian that she wanted to stop running. That Storybrooke was her home and nothing would ever change that. Taking away her magic, severing her ties to her own destiny would only feel like running away.

And what about Jasmine? She had spent at least thirty-two years looking for this man. In the Underworld, Emma had been devastated when Killian told her she had to leave without him. What would Jasmine think when Aladdin told her he had just…given up? Had run away to the Enchanted Forest, presumably never to see her again? Emma's vision had scared her into silence, made her wonder if maybe she should give up her magic – if only for a split second – but never had she considered walking away from the people she cared about.

 _But,_ the voice in her head reminded her, _if all this had started happening when I first came to Storybrooke, I would have._

It was true. Even at the very start, before she had known that she was up against the Evil Queen, she had taken Henry and tried to run away. She had almost taken him to New York two years later. All her life, people had been trying to tell her who she was and what she was meant to do. Most of them thought that the answer to both was 'nothing'. Finally, she was somewhere where she actually mattered. Where people looked to her to lead and to help them. And all she had wanted to do was hide. Sure, she was the Savior, but for a long time…she had been a street rat.

According to Jasmine, Aladdin had only been the Savior for two years when he finally disappeared for good. With twice the experience, Emma could hardly judge him. It had taken the better part of three years for her to learn to fully trust the people who cared about her. And if Aladdin had not had anyone to lean on when his visions had started and his hands had begun to tremble, he must have felt even more scared than she was.

The blonde knew that he meant for her to take the shears, but all she could do was stare. First at the shears, then at the man holding them. There were deep circles under his eyes like bruises, and a smudge of dirt across his cheek. His shoulders were raised in a tense line. She knew that look. She herself had had it for years.

"What about Jasmine?" He frowned and peered at Emma without lifting his head. "She's never stopped looking for you." The guilt that had been lurking in his voice flared up across Aladdin's features, then disappeared as quickly as it had surfaced.

"It's better she forgets about me. If she finds out what I've done-" He could not seem to bring himself to finish the thought. He shook his head and wobbled the shears lightly, trying to coax Emma into taking them. "Our story never even begun." She frowned, confusion written on her brow.

"Really? In the movie, you guys were–"

"Duty always got in the way," Aladdin interrupted in a tone that suggested he was very tired of hearing about the movie.

Gently, as if still deciding what to do, Emma wrapped her fingers around the shears, but she did not pull them away. Aladdin's eyes shifted to look at both their hands on the scissors that had caused him so much damn trouble.

"Look, I was a street rat too. For a _long_ time, I thought that was all I could be." Henry looked up at his mom. Her eyes were wide and earnest. "But when you get someone who cares about you as much as Jasmine clearly does…" She tilted her head, forcing Aladdin to look at her again. "…you hang onto them." Aladdin let go of the shears but held Emma's gaze. She shook her head once. "No more running."

Aladdin's brow furrowed and his lips formed a hard line. He wanted to agree with her. He wanted to follow her and her boy up the stairs and into the light and go to his princess. He wanted to stop running. But a voice in the back of his head – perhaps the only selfless part of him left after years of thieving – would not be silenced.

"If I had never known the shears existed, I would still have tried to find a way out," he insisted. "And you, you're strong, Emma." He shook his head. "But you're not stronger than fate." Henry tensed. Emma only shrugged one shoulder.

"Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe your mistake was trying to keep fighting alone." Aladdin's eyebrows twitched downward and he was silent for a long moment.

A small part of him acknowledged that she was probably right. In the end, he had had Rahma, but she was just a kid. Clever, but a kid nonetheless. What chance did a nurse have against Jafar? Or any villain, for that matter? Having someone he could talk to, someone who could help him fight, might have made a difference. It was a thought that had tormented him every night in the Enchanted Forest, and every day since Mr. Hyde had arrived and he had realized that Jasmine was in Storybrooke. And he would feel just as guilty for not being honest with Jasmine the last time he had seen her as he would for putting Rahma in danger. Why should someone like him deserve a second chance?

Yet, Emma had called him out. Yes, he was a street rat. He had made a number of mistakes and almost as many difficult decisions in order to survive in a suffering country. Aladdin could not remember the last time he had caught any kind of break. Some long-ignored logical part of him knew that if his life had been just a little fairer – and if he had ever had a real opportunity to be a hero – there was an excellent chance he would have taken it. Perhaps what he really needed was someone good. Someone to remind him that he could be more than just a selfish street rat. Someone to give him a second chance.

"…maybe," he conceded.

* * *

Normally, Aladdin was excellent at keeping his thoughts within his head. However, he had been walking for so long that he could hardly think at all. His legs were sore and his shoulder was tingling where it had clipped a surly, one-handed pirate. He had apologized to Hook and had not waited for the captain to reply.

"Please don't hate me," he muttered as he approached the park. The sun was only beginning to set, casting a golden glow over the pond. He quickly leaned down and dipped a hand into the water, hoping nobody noticed as he scrubbed at the dirt he knew was smudged on his face. _"Please_ don't hate me."

For her part, Jasmine's legs were growing very stiff. The princess had been sitting on the park bench, staring down at the faded scarab for well over two hours. Perhaps passers-by had given her a few strange looks – she had not looked up much. After making it back to Regina's vault, Jasmine had told her that she needed to be alone, and had not wandered for long before slumping on this bench in defeat. Perhaps she could make it back to Agrabah on her own. Maybe she could still help her people. But that was only half of the mission. Finding Aladdin had been the other half.

Well, she had found him.

She had never mentioned it to Aladdin, but she had actually stolen the scarab to plant on him the first day that they met. It had been easy; under Jafar's control, her father had become complacent. The Sultan had left the scarab lying on a table in his bedroom. Later, when he noticed it missing, Aladdin was already long gone from the capital. Her father had not been as upset as she had thought he would be, choosing to walk away from her and calm down rather than shout his disappointment that she would give something so meaningful away.

"I'm sorry, father," she breathed, wiping impatiently at the tear tracks on her face. "I'm so, so sorry."

When he saw her, Aladdin slowed to a stop. He had been trying to think of a good way to do this for over two hours, but had come up blank. More than thirty-two years they had been apart. A simple tap on the shoulder was not going to suffice. Nor, for that matter, would any apology he could ever offer her.

Three times he tried to speak. Three times he choked on his words. In the end, he did not get a fourth chance.

The back of Jasmine's neck prickled and, after a solid five minutes of ignoring it, she finally looked up and to her right. His clothes were modern – baggy jeans, tee shirt – and his hair was unkempt, but she knew his eyes.

Aladdin froze.

 _Please don't hate me._

Jasmine opened her mouth to try to say something. His name, maybe. All she could manage, though, was an astonished laugh, and as she stood, a wonderstruck grin. The fear left Aladdin's wide eyes as they crinkled in a nearly face-splitting smile. Before he could fully process what was happening, the princess had barreled into his arms.

He caught her easily, lifting and spinning her, not caring who saw.

"I thought you were dead!" she cried breathlessly once he'd set her down. She pulled back far enough that she could see his face, her hand immediately cupping the side of it, thumb softly stroking his skin as it reassured her that he was real. He had come back.

Jasmine's eyes studied the features that she had been so scared she had lost, sweeping them over and over again. It was strange and wonderful and she could see the time that had passed in his eyes. But the way he smiled at her felt just like every other time he had.

"I thought I'd never see you again." Aladdin's voice was shaky, eyes shining, but his hands were steady on her back. When she shook her head he sensed disbelief and pulled her in again, more softly this time. One hand threaded through her soft, dark hair and he breathed deeply. Cinnamon. Her face was pressed into him, fitting with his neck and his collarbone perfectly. Aladdin held her like that for minutes on end. She was reluctant to pull back – she could have stayed there forever – but she did.

One of Aladdin's hands lingered on the princess's back, the other threading through the ends of her hair. He was close, he was _so close._

A number of things happened then, all in mere seconds.

The world began to narrow. The sky, the sunset, the pond, the _air_ folded inward until all that remained was the grass. There was vibrant green beneath them, breezy air around them, just the two of them and the breaths between them.

 _Wait, no!_ growled a voice in Jasmine's head – the assistant teacher voice. _You stole the scarab, you searched for three decades, you have to save your people._ There were so many things she had to tell him. _Damn it, what is_ wrong _with my heart?_ But the offending organ was strangely steady in its beating, and she would swear she could hear Aladdin's synchronizing with hers. His thumb drifted from her soft hair to brush her jaw. His hand was warm. He was warm.

Her hands rested on his upper arms, unsure of what else to do with themselves, though his left hand was resting gently but firmly on her back.

"So, what now?" It was banter, she knew it was. He was slowly drifting closer, eyes finally resting in their endless calculation. Aladdin always focused so intently with her. Yet, Jasmine could only think of…oh.

 _Oh._

"Now, you have to help me." She took a steadying breath. The princess used her hold on his arms to push herself back, putting as much distance between them as she could without stepping away. Trying to get away from those deep eyes as the peace within them shattered, splintering and scattering like fallen pomegranate seeds. She watched him wonder what he had done wrong. Only now did her heart pick up speed, and tempting as it was to try to take her words back, she knew it was too late. "Agrabah is in danger-we need a Savior."

Urgent as her tone was, Aladdin still found it within him to look up, over her head, and suck in a breath through his teeth. Suddenly, he was very glad that she had backed away. Perhaps now that he had leaned away as well, she would deem him outside of slapping range. For a moment he considered lying, but what good would that do?

"Yeah." He made an entire sentence of the word, eyes shifting as uncomfortably as his feet were inclined to do before finally finding hers again. "Um…about that…"

* * *

 **As ever, feedback is appreciated!**


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